Whilst cruising the Spanish Rias we lost the bearings from our Selden Furlex. We managed a quick repair (a job well done, blog post 322715) until we had the Selden professionals www.petekeeping.com take a look and service it properly in Portimao. One of their observations was that the turnbuckle (bottlescrew) that was mounted below the furling drum is something Selden no longer do or indeed recommend because of the turning moment applied to the forestay when under load or in the event of a component failure like what we experienced. Unfortunately they couldn't help with an off-the shelf solution but they did fabricate a couple of plates with machine screws that locked the turnbuckle as best it could.


old turnbuckle (bottlescrew) with locking plates

We were running with this solution until we were lifted in Manoel Island Yacht Yard and had the boat surveyed. In the main everything was found to be in extremely good order but once again the surveyor commented on the turnbuckle below the furling drum. In this instance he was concerned about the welded fork on the bottom of the turnbuckle and recommended that this be changed for a toggle style fork without any welds. This would address any issues of corrosion and allow better movement fore and aft and side to side.

An easy solution you would have thought but like many things on a boat there is always a surprise waiting.

When trying to source a replacement we identified that the clevis pins (the horizontal pins at each end of the turnbuckle) were of different diameters - 14mm on the bow roller & 16mm on the Furlex something that isn't available as far as we are aware.

It was time to turn to the professionals once again so we turned to a rigging company in the UK "allspars" www.allspars.co.uk that we have worked with previously and we have complete trust.

We explained our position and left it with David Barden the Production Director who quickly came up with a solution and pinged over his thoughts.

After checking all the measurements one final time we commissioned the work.

A few weeks later we received the parts courtesy of DHL and their DDP service (Delivered Duty Paid) and at the first opportunity we installed it.



As you can see in the main image, the turnbuckle has been removed completely and the Selden toggles attached to the bottom of the furling drum and bow roller allow for complete articulation.

A good job done we think!!