Furlers: Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down

What the best riggers in the business have to say about the systems they install, maintain, and repair.

As furling units like this Profurl — recently installed on a new Beneteau 323 — have become industry standards, professional riggers have charted their evolution.

By almost any measure, roller furling units have evolved to become nearly ubiquitous in our pastime. And, as we wrote in our Feb. 1, 2004 market scan of headsail furling units, that evolution has rendered many of these products superbly functional. To wit, an overwhelming majority of respondents to the reader survey that accompanied that article gave these products high ratings for reliability and functionality. Our experience concurs with that. (We installed furling units on two of our test boats in the past.) It seems that these systems are generally earning their keep, but that's an outlook which needs to be further qualified.…