Tapering braided line
 

Hi,
I have a roller furler with a drum too small (or is the line too big?) On the furler is a big, light-air genoa which requires numerous turns to put it away: so the line must be relatively small, but able to carry quite a high load. On the other end I need a line that is big enough to really pull on without it cutting my hands, or to go on the self-tailer. How do I taper the line to suit both my hands/winch one end and the drum the other? Thanks for any ideas. David

Two common techniques , used with different lines, are as follows.
If you are using polyester double braided line and do not plan on using the unit to fly that 150% reefed, then you can just pull the core out of the first 25-45 ft ( or LOD of the boat really ) of the furling line and cut the core off there with a slight taper, and milk the cover back down so the core disappears inside. Some use a whipping to secure the core near where it is cut off inside the cover, some do not. This 'flat' line can take the least amount of space on the drum using just line.

If the furler is to be used as a reefing gear, and there is enough room on the drum, I recommend using a spectra core/polyester cover line. Strip the cover off for the LOD of the boat back from the drum, and you will always have big grippy line in your hand, small but strong line throughout.

It was at one point common to use wire for the first length and the splice a rope tail on that. This makes for a big difference in diameters .

What splice would be best to join 3/16" spectra single braid to something like 7/16" double braid poly ?

Hi Brian,
Thanks for that BUT:
Plan 1 is no good as I need the strength of spectra. Plan 2 I have tried but the spectra doesn’t like the rolling onto itself under load and doesn’t like the no-load, loose situation. Plan 3 Good but I fear would eat up my plastic drum in time.
I did do a constant diameter end splice 3/8 to 5/8 but that is not happy as the small cover doesn’t cover the bigger line diameter too well and the cross-over is a bit ugly. All this to say I would like a taper maybe like they do on tapered sheets. Is this machine made or can someone give me instructions. Thanks for any leads, David

What sort of furler needs such great strength in the furling line? If you can pull it at all by hand, you'd be unlikely to break even the flimsiest junk from a hardware store. If you must use a winch, something is wrong with the furler. Try something other than spectra.

G'luck

I agree with Ian here. I'm not sure what situation you have going here but you shouldn't really need anything stronger than simple old 1/4" double braid - using bigger line just makes it more comfortable to handle. In fact, in terms of strength even that should be overly strong. If you fly your sail all in/all out then there should never be a load on that line greater than what you can put on with a dead pull (no winch, no blocks, etc). If that's not enough to roll the sail up you probably have much bigger issues. If you are sailing reefed, the drum generally offers a mechanical advantage over the rolled sail so that reefing line isn't experiencing the same loads as your sheet.

yep they are right.