Roller furling installation

[Jim Walsh]

There were a couple times offshore last summer when I did not look forward to going forward to douse my staysail. I religiously wore my safety harness and religiously clipped onto a hard point or my jacklines, but when the "elevator" headed for the basement there were times I was airborne. As such, I decided a roller furling staysail, to complement my roller furling yankee, would be a nice St. Patrick's day gift to myself. (I know it's a little early but I won't toast its installation till next week)
I did lots of research and decided to go with a Harken ESP Unit 0. The "Unit 0" selection is predicated by your staysail stay length. They have several other "Unit" sizes available in their ESP furlers. The ESP line features a round foil section and one luff groove. I chose the "long leg kit" which is attached to the base of the furling drum and allows easy access to my turnbuckle for staysail stay tension adjustments.
It was unseasonably warm today so I removed my staysail stay from my mast and tackled the assembly and installation. My mast is stored in a rack for the winter so removing the stay was a bit of a challenge. Two other masts were on the same shelf and, of course, mine was the furthest back. It was also over 6 feet high so I got lots of exercise climbing up and down my ladder. I set up my workstation on three plastic tarps on the ground which actually provided a decent surface upon which to work.
The actual assembly took three hours. I was being very cautious and followed the assembly instruction to a "T". I discovered a couple glaring discrepancies in the instructions and I'll be sending Harken an advisory email. There's no excuse for a company which prides itself on quality and product integrity to have instructions which are not similarly world class.
That being said, the components were precisely manufactured and everything went together very well. I'm sure I could assemble another ESP unit in half the time now that I'm familiar with the components and the assembly procedure.
I had replaced all my standing rigging a few years ago myself and I used Sta-Lok terminals. These terminals would not fit through the foil connectors without me removing the terminals and reassembling them. I chose to have Rigging Only make me a new stay with swaged terminals purely for ease of installation.
If you are considering a Harken ESP furling unit I would urge you to "do it yourself".

[tjr818]

That looks real nice Jim, but how in the world did you lift that foil to reinstall it? Our PO did that on our little 27 and he put a nasty kink in the foil about 10 feet down from the top.

[Jim Walsh]

Carefully
I lifted the drum and loosely tied it to the outermost mast on my shelf, then I did the same with the top end, then I lifted the belly up. Then it was just a matter of lifting it in sections over the other two masts. It actually went easier than I had anticipated. Had it not gone smoothly I could have asked for help.