I crossed paths with a furling drum and swivel in a box of spare parts from our club. Since harken parts # 434 and 435 are identical dimensionally but differ in load tolerances, I emailed them and asked them if there was a way to find out. They said take it apart, and look at the color of the bearings, if they are green, then its the highload, if they are white or black, then the drum is the standard 500lbs load.



Now I openned it up, and the bearings were not green, they were not white, and they were not black, but rather a rather unfavorable shade of puke-brown. It looks like it may have been green at some point in time, but considering that these bearings aren't exposed to UV light, then I'm less inclined to believe that they got faded.



I was wondering if it was a good idea to put this on my H17 that has no furling hardware for the jib. If the max load of the drum is 500lbs, does that mean that the forestay is gonna break free, or does it simply mean that the drum will not turn, therefore eliminating the furling action?



Thanks for your help!

Hi - I believe that the high-load furler has a blue label on the furler. I think the lower-load one is a red label. You might be able to verify this on the harken website, or at murrays.



Alan

When I rebuilt my Harkan traveler I had the option of the Delrin or Torlon bearings. The Delrin bearings (low load) are white and the Torlon (high load) are brown. Sounds like you have the high load furler. I would agree with your assessment that the worst case is that the thing won't rotate - but I would check elsewhere as a) I'm no expert in this area and b) that would be an ugly demasting.

Brown is the highload (although Harken calls that color green) use them not the white ones. Nothing is worse than when something like that does not work right when you NEED it too.



Steve

Well it has the blue label and the bearings are brown/green/whatever they want to call it. So I'm confident that this is the highload drum. Fantastic, now all I have to do, is figure out what length I want my forestay to be.

Is the only difference in the bearings? Can one change up to high load simply by changing them?



Thanks

Any reason you can't just buy a 17 Sport Forestay? How did you convert your old forestay bridle to the new length? If you just added a couple short wires without the foil, I'd be real concerned that you were putting extreme stress on the hulls. The 17 hull is light, would increase the risk of fracturing/collapsing a hull with loading the stress in the direction pulling inward instead of up. The factory front foil is the same stock as a H-17 boom, but I would think any sort of reinforced aluminum tube would work just as well the only point of the foil on the 17 is to keep the working loads on the hulls in the directions for which it is designed, not pulling both hulls inward. If you coupled that with the pressure of the water pushing in the same direction that the forestay is pulling, you have drastically increased the load and are probably looking at a stress failure of the hulls at some point when you're having the most fun.

Just my .02

CARY

Hobie 17 Sport Guy, too

If the "foil" you speak of is in fact the spreader bar, then I have one of those. I've got the sport package, but it was before the rollerfurling was standard equipment. If I'm missing something, its purely because of my inexperience with cats I'm kind of new still.

Hi Tad,

If you need any help rigging your boat, give me a call(919)544-4521.

I live in Durham at the edge of RTP.

We have a website for Hobie Division 9(ww.hobiediv9.org) with our schedule and contacts.

Our fleet, Hobie Fleet 97, serves central NC (www.rtpnet.org/hobie97/).

The next "local" event is the Fourth of July Regatta at Lake Norman Yacht Club (www.lakenormanyachtclub.com/index.htm) near Charlotte. It is a big event open to any kind of sailboat. There is usually plenty of food, a beer truck, a band and a big fireworks display over the water.

The next Div 9 event is the Ya Gotta Regatta at Myrtle Beach, SC (Huntington Beach State Park) on August 17 & 18. Then the Camp Hatteras Regatta in Rodanthe, NC (Camp Hatteras Campground, Hatteras Island) on August 24 & 25.



See ya

Sam Evans, Commodore, Hobie Fleet 97

This happens to me all the time, now that I know what you're talking about, I can answer your question better.



I have the "sport" bridle assembly, including the spreader bar already, I simply don't have the furling hardware installed.