Hey Hank,
Sorry to hear about your trials. Your analysis is spot on I think. Ive been sailing Rhodes for almost 50 years and letting the furling line  whip into the mast on an un restricted deployment will often result in what you described. If you can manage in calm wind,  try to raise the mast, tune the rigging ( lots of threads in the archives on this) and then orient the boat on the trailer so you have “port tack”. Try deploying the main slowly with some tension on the furling line.  The boom should be on your stb qtr with the out haul slightly lower than the gooseneck. Hopefully this will confirm your analysis. Furl and deploy until until  it seems comfortable and natural. Watch closely to see that the problem was not in the mechanism itself. The only other problem I ever had in all these years was the strap at the head of the sail became detached and the sail sagged down. Not good when you are several miles offshore in Mexico. But because of the simplicity of the system, like you, I got it furled.  Uh the system was simple, not you Hank. Grin. Anyway, welcome to the club and I’m sure there are several other Rhodies who can add their thoughts for a solution.

Chris Geankoplis
Xenos

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 2:45 AM hankstein--- via Rhodes22-list <
rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org> wrote:

> I finally launched my new to me 1993 R-22.
> I could not get the main to roller furl back into the mast.  purposely
> took the boat out on a fairly light day to test things out -  I always
> single hand so it was a problem...  seemed jammed to me -  finally got the
> sail to furl when I was almost back to the ramp up the Huron River here in
> Ohio.  (yikes)
> I suspect that perhaps I rolled the sail out too fast and maybe the
> furling line was "cattywompus" inside the mast .. (I did not keep tension
> on the furling line)  bunched up maybe ?  or maybe the rig is not tuned
> well (it wasn't) since I always did fear that ANY mast bend might jam the
> in mast furler.   I am not sure what I did wrong..  This winter I intend to
> remove the sail for some sail work so will have an opportunity to check the
> furling unit.
> Any suggestions on what to do is very appreciated.This would be both scary
> and disastrous if I needed to furl in an approaching storm.
> thanks..   Hank      Muireann  1993  R-22       Huron, Ohio
>
> 727 324 8628
>