Schaefer 2100 Furler Drum

[russp]

In case it is of interest, a while back a very helpful owner of a "big" Catalina posted an article in the Technical Discussion area of Mainsheet and wrote about replacement of his 3100 furler drum. Mine had been progressively getting more stiff and flushing made no difference so I contacted Schaefer and ordered a replacement (upgrade on 2003 model) drum with bearings. The new bearing has a flushing hole above the Torlon bearings to allow more effective fresh water flushing and was a bargain at US$140 direct from Schaefer.

Fearing disconnecting the forestay (I remembered once talking to a yacht owner sitting on the bow of his yacht surrounded by block and tackles and lines and wondering how he was going to close the 6" gap between his forestay and the deck fitting!) I put the exchange off and off for 2 years as the drum became progressively more difficult to furl or unfurl. Yesterday I finally got around to it and just wanted to advise owners that it is really simple and just took time (I spent about 4 hours in total including cleaning up and polishing the drum plates).

In short: let off backstays by 30 x 1/2 turns each side (checking wasn't running out of thread); attached gennaker halyard and jib halyard to anchor rests and tensioned lines; removed furler line; followed Schaefer instructions for turnbuckle adjustment (pages 22/23 of the installation instructions they packaged with the drum); let off forestay turnbuckle by 30 x 1/2 turns, easily slipped forestay attachment pin out by hand; swapped drums over; reversed everything and voila, forestay spins with one finger and keeps spinning if you just give it a flick. I cannot rotate the old drum by hand - at all!!!

If you can't easily furl or unfurl you genoa by hand I strongly suggest you give this a try. Once the Torlon bearings are binding doesn't seem there is any solution to recover them. I am hoping that the upgraded drum will give me many years of frictionless furling.

Russ Peel
Avalon #150