Alado Furler: Good Stuff for Good Old Boats

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When we first bought Moonrise, she had hank on foresails. Hank on sails are simple  and very reliable but even with our Catalina 27 we had a few anxious moments when there was too much wind and sea motion to feel safe leaving the cockpit to wrestle down our big genoa. Therefore, a roller furler was practically the first thing I did to Moonrise to make her ours. Melissa and I both feel that this single piece of gear is one of the best investments we ever made.

Honey, can you swap the head sail?

Honey, can you swap the head sail?

When I was researching furling units I wanted a furler I could install myself but I was not too keen on ascending the mast. Many furling units require that someone go aloft and lower the forestay so that the foil and top swivel can be installed. I have climbing gear now and so ascending the mast is not such a scary proposition. But when we first bought the boat, all we had was a bosun’s chair and Melissa grinding away on a Barient 21 winch. I trust the woman with my life, but only figuratively and not while I’m dangling from a halyard of unknown age and condition.

So it was with some excitement that I began to research the Alado Furlers. Alado, a Brazilian company, doesn’t seem to have the same big marketing budgets as Harken or Pro Furl. They advertise in our favorite sailing magazine, Good Old Boat, so you may be forgiven if you have never heard of them. Alado builds their furlers out of aluminum and they are hell for stout. The foil is not some flimsy plastic extrusion; rather, they are beautiful, anodized aluminum interlocking extrusions that offer two feeders for sails. Yes, you can run two headsails in a dihedral formation from this furler.

The cross section of the A4 size foil extrusion. the two sides interlock around the head stay, allowing for installation at deck level. Note the two feeds for luff tape.

The cross section of the A4 size foil extrusion. the two sides interlock around the head stay, allowing for installation at deck level. Note the two feeds for luff tape.

What sealed the deal for me was that Practical Sailor reviewed a number of furling units and the Alado unit was favorably mentioned. If you already subscribe to Practical Sailor, you can read the article here.

Our Alado Furler, ready for duty

Our Alado Furler, ready for duty

Finally, the price of the Alado Furlers was well below the major brands in the U.S. In early 2009, I paid around $1400 for a somewhat over-sized unit. The same furler today is priced at $1720, still a very good value.

The installation process consists of installing the upper sheaves and the foil extrusions onto the forestay. The foil extrusions are five feet long and easily mate together so the entire foil is assembled on the deck and pushed up the forestay. A spare halyard is used to haul the foil up the stay using a rolling hitch. Care has to be taken that the foil pieces cannot slide off your forestay before installing the drum. These are beefy chunks of metal which act as a torque tube to the upper sheaves. Seeing one slip over the side of your boat would ruin your day.

After assembling and raising the foil sections, you must secure the mast using a spare halyard and then remove the forestay from the deck fitting. Now, Installation of the drum and delrin bearing is completed by sliding these pieces up the forestay and adjusting as necessary to allow for clearance of your anchor. After the forestay is re-attached and tensioned, the foil can be lowered onto the drum and tightened. Haul up your sail and go sailing! I estimate the total install time was about three hours by myself.

The only issue I have with the Alado design is how to handle the jib halyard. If you wish to keep a fully functioning halyard at the furler, you will have perhaps 50 feet of line that you must secure so that it does not interfere with the rest of your sailing activities. Rather than keep 50 feet of line, I cut the halyard short enough to tension the luff and tie it off. When I need to drop the sail, I tie on a spare sheet with a sheep’s bend and then bring the sail down. After I have finished my work on the sail, I haul it back up and retension as normal. As I mentioned earlier, Two sails can be hoisted simultaneously with the Alado. I don’t know what one would do with all the extra line that this would create if you wanted to maintain two fully functioning halyards. The use of small diameter, low stretch lines would probably be the best way to go.

Cast Aluminum furling drum. Note the two eyes for two jib halyards.

Cast Aluminum furling drum. Note the two eyes for two jib halyards.

The drum of the Alado units are larger than many of the drums I have seen from Harken and Profurl. This is extra weight, true, but it is also extra mechanical advantage when rolling up a big sail in a blow. We have had occasion to run our big genoa partially furled and, as you might expect, the sail shape is not so great. Still, it beats being severely overpowered or in danger of a broach.

Melissa and I have been more than pleased with the Alado and I would gladly buy another one for our next boat if it does not already have a furler. As we outfit our next boat for blue water, I want products that are this simple to install and maintain.

If you are in the market for a furling unit, visit the Alado.com site and check them out. If you have an Alado, comment below and tell us about your experience with this bit of hardware.

Identifying Wildlife

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Today was a good kind of day. In fact, it was one of the best kinds of days a person can have on land, and a great antidote to my curmudgeonly mood of late in terms of  the subject of boats. Mike and I went down to Olympia to check on our girl Moonrise, have lunch, and generally spend the day hanging around together. We found Moonrise bobbing sweetly right in front of the broker’s office, next to my friend Sue’s “pirate ship”, also for sale. Hurray! Potential customers walking along the boardwalk have an unobstructed view of our boat. One of the brokers showed her today to a client who came down to see a different boat, saw ours, and wanted a viewing. So it does seem like she is getting more attention in the Olympia market.

Moonrise and her blue water friend.

Moonrise and her blue water friend.

What made today so much fun was that while we were in Olympia, I photographed two boats for writing reviews and that gives us legitimate access to the docks where we can walk slowly up and down looking at hundreds of different boats. It’s amazing how legit a person can look with a smart looking camera hanging around her neck, even if it’s just a little point and shoot digital camera with a fancy lens and complicated menus. (Right Lee Youngblood?) Today we saw plenty of very cool boats that made us want to see more.

This one is named 'Sea Lass'. It's pretty awesome.

This one is named ‘Sea Lass’. It’s pretty awesome. I’d love to review it.

I wish there were some kind of field guide to world sailboats because identifying sailboats is much like identifying wildlife. Most often there is no identifying builder’s or designer’s name anywhere on the vessel in plain sight, so one is left asking questions as though it were some wild animal naming test. What is this boat’s shape? What are its obvious habits? Is it a fast traveler or a slow and steady beast? Would this boat live best close to shore or would it revel in the deep blue sea? Is it built for colder climates and rougher conditions? Or is it a lazy kind of boat that enjoys soft warm breezes and gentle swells? Is its life expectancy long and full, or short and sweet? We ask these questions, looking for clues to the creator. After walking a couple of docks in Swantown Marina, we suspect there is a large contingent of Crealock owners down in Olympia.

What is this? Any ideas?

What is this? Any ideas?

Isn’t it strange how the feel of sailboats is so much different than that of other kinds of things we might travel inside? When we see an old boat, teak trim allowed to go grey in the weather, bronze fittings turning that distinguished shade of blue green, our thoughts go immediately to what journeys that boat has had. Where has it gone? Who has had the pleasure of the traveling? What has it seen? What adventures are resting in it’s hull, waiting to be uncovered? We don’t ask those same kinds of questions with old, beat up cars, though.

All I think of when I see a beat up older car is that it probably shouldn’t be on the road anymore’ that it’s likely a danger to self and others. Even with RV’s that may have traveled thousands of miles, the feeling is just one of ‘sheesh, wish this were newer’. There is never the level of respect for these vehicles that one can feel for a sailboat. Somehow, wisdom and experience doesn’t seem to be stored in them the same way.  I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps it’s that boats have been around for centuries. Cars are still pretty new in terms of our human experience. Maybe they just don’t speak to us on a cellular level like boats can.

Look closely for the guardian of the boat.

Look closely for the guardian of the boat.

So we wandered and wondered today about the boats we saw. We want to get started looking again for our next boat because it may take us awhile to find her. It will take a lot for a boat to live up to the expectations set by Flying Gull. The bar is set very high. We’ve come to terms with the fact that this summer will probably not be filled with sailing, but we’d like it to be filled with looking, like it was today. There are also some boats down in California that we’d like to go and see like this Cheoy Lee 50. It’s somewhat out of our price range at this time, but who knows what can happen?

Today we enjoyed photographing an Endurance 37 (the pirate ship in the first photo) and an Endeavor 42, both for sale through Capital City Yachts. I’ll be writing reviews of them to be published at a later date on ThreeSheetsNW.com. I’m always looking for interesting boats to write up, so if you are in the Puget Sound area and own an interesting boat you’d like me to write about, or if you are a yacht broker who lists interesting boats, drop me a line. My most recently published review is on a sweet little Perry designed Islander Freeport 36.

So, note to the Universe: more days like this, please.

Kind of says 'Yorktown' to me. What do you think?

Kind of says ‘Yorktown’ to me. What do you think?

 

Meanwhile…Back at the Ranch…

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I feel compelled to post an update about our lack of progress. When we started this blog I wanted it to tell the whole process, not just the fun part. This is one of those posts that is not all about pretty paper umbrellas in fruity drinks. In fact, I’d say it’s pretty much the opposite of that.

This is not happening in this post. Be prepared.

Lately the energy around this whole cunning plan of ours has been about as thick as Mississippi mud. I understand that’s pretty thick, as in the stick-to-your-boots, cement-heavy clumps of clay kind of thick. Just to flesh out the metaphor, I’ll bet it’s stinky with anaerobic bacteria, and it’s red and stains everything it touches forever and ever. Am I being too dramatic here?  I am about to drive myself insane. This time I’m not alone, as Mike feels much the same way. Two insane people together. It’s not pretty. We watch a lot of TV lately…Have you seen Big Bang Theory? It’s a good distraction. We laugh and laugh and laugh…

Here is a soothing tree peony.

Here is a soothing tree peony.

The short of it is that we moved Moonrise down to Olympia where she would ‘sit in front of the broker’s office’ so that passer’s by could see the boat. She’s a pretty boat, well kept, good repair, reliable engine, and all that. The only little glitch in that plan is that…wait for it… she is not actually sitting in front of the broker’s office. She’s in a regular slip, and so it’s pretty hard to see her among all the other boats. We gave a big collective sigh on that one because it just figures.

What is up with this issue with selling the boat? It isn’t as though Moonrise isn’t getting shown. She’s been shown several times. Maybe she’s being shown more in Olympia than she would be here. Who knows? Brokers can only do so much. It doesn’t matter anyway, since we gave up our Tacoma slip, which was snatched from our hot little hands practically before we could spit. Who knew our slip was so desirable? So now we have a boat that is inconveniently far from home home, still sitting in a slip surrounded by other boats, still on the market, and still unsold. The price has been lowered again. It’s more than fair. Really. I even wrote our own Yachtworld ad so that I could be sure it accurately reflected our boat.

We'll refer to this later.

We’ll refer to this later. See the bird netting? That’s to protect the koi from herons.

Between the Flying Gull debacle, which still sits on my heart like a f***ing stone, and the difficulty we’re having selling this boat, on this particular day I feel as though it’s going to be a cold day in heck before I’m going to want to buy another boat, since whatever boat we choose we’ll be stuck with until the end of eternity. Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but the sheer difficulty we’ve had selling what is really a very good coastal cruiser in a price range most would kill for makes me feel very strongly that we better choose oh so extremely carefully next time.  We better get that most elusive of boats: the one that can do it all. You know that boat I’m talking about; the one that doesn’t exist.

There is probably someone out there who would be glad to tell us right now that it’s ‘not about the boat’. I beg you. Don’t say it. Really. Instead, read this page for a description of the reasons we feel the need to sell our current boat before moving forward. If we decide otherwise in the future, the blog readers will know it soon enough.

Okay, enough yelling, foot stomping, spitting and general acting out.

This door to replace one that has seen better days

This door to replace one that has seen better days

Meanwhile, back at the ranch house, Mike’s work at Boeing is looking like there could be some major changes coming since he’s a developer and Boeing is trying to find ways to save money on IT. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing but it might give us an opportunity to live differently faster than we thought. Therefore, not wanting to be caught with our proverbial pants down, we are starting to get the house into shape in earnest. That means Mike has been replacing old doors and painting trim. I am working with my little gray cells, planning what to do with my 4000 gallon pond, which is a huge liability when it comes to renting the house. I’ll have to find a home for my big koi, and then we’ll probably fill it in and create a pondless waterfall. That way we can still have the stream and the sound, but no danger to small children and animals. And very little maintenance. I’m all about that lately. This project will probably take the whole summer unless I can hire part of it out. I am loathe to get started on it, frankly.

And then we have more junk to get rid of, the exterior trim needs painting, there is wood that needs repairing, more molding that needs finishing, old doors that need cleaning, the wood floor in the dining room needs refinishing, the saltillo tile needs a new finish, we should get a load of gravel for the driveway, go through the stuff in the attic, the wallpaper in Andrew’s room is peeling and his room needs updating anyhow since he’s not 7 years old anymore, oh, and both kids are coming home so that means I have to move all my stuff out of the closet in Claire’s old room and reconsider our food storage options in the kitchen, rearrange furniture again, decide how to store the things we will not be tossing out, put more stuff on Craigslist, possibly have a big sale at some point. Anyone for some Big Bang Theory? The couch beckons.

So what we’re looking at here is a summer of work projects… around the ranch house. Open invitation to anyone who complains that boats are a lot of work: want to come over? We’ve got a few hundred big jobs we could use help with.

Yeah, I thought this was an interesting photo, too. That's what it's all about just now.

Yeah, I thought this was an interesting photo, too. That’s what it’s all about just now for Mike.