Spinnaker Receiver Bag

Please welcome new contributor Willy from s/v Acrux, a Drakkar 32.  Willy shows us his solution for capturing all the billowing cloth when dousing his spinnaker.  I think you'll enjoy his unique idea...

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The spinnaker receiver bag normally lives folded and rolled up out of the way against the heads bulkhead.  It slides back and forth along two thin lines secured to the ceiling of the coachroof with omega fasteners

When it's time to bring down the kite (chute) I undo the little retaining cord and unhank first one side, bring it out and back

Then the other one, so the four hanks, one at each corner, hold the bag open. As a refinement, I added two thin battens, one on each side, to stop the bag from collapsing. There is no need for athwartship battens a the separation of the lines keeps the bag open if the slider lines are taut enough.

For a larger bag or looser runner lines, additional athwarthsip battens could prove useful

The crew sitting at the "piano" position slides the bag back to receive the kite as it's handed below, passing under the boom, by the deck hands:

The bag is made of mesh rather than sailcloth for better airing.

Usually we bring the kite down with halyard and sheets, hoist the foresail (in more haste if rounding a mark!) and then clip halyard and sheets together and pass them back to the deck crew 

Then we slide the bag with the kite forward, unship the bell, hang the head, clew and tack rings there and sort the package before stuffing it into the sailbag. 

The receiver bag does double duty sliding it halfway to receive wet foulies. if weather permits, sliding it directly under the coachroof hatch for airing.

Also a good place to chuck in mooring lines, fenders, etc. temporarily until they're sorted out properly.

I also screwed in four omega fasteners under the forehatch, to move the bag over there to receive foresails when it's time for a sail change. The G1 is a tight fit but the other foresails make it.

Actualization

This post originally appeared on Windborne in Puget Sound

I have no excuse for the long pause in posting here, except: life.

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As with many projects, the design and planning stages take longer than the actual execution.  Making a new sail cover for Eolian's mizzen was one of those projects.  I started thinking about this last summer, while hanging on the mizzen boom by one arm, way out past the stern rail, making up the fasteners on the far end of the sail cover.  I have been doing this acrobatic act for 20 years, but lately my shoulders have started to bother me, telling me that this process was going to have to change.  

Well finally last week everything came together and I was able to spend the time to put the plans and design to the test: actual sewing.

You really want to use a hot knife for this...

I unrolled the Sunbrella on the dock, laid out the pieces using a chalk line, and cut them out using my brand new, handy-dandy hot knife (you really want to use a hot knife for this work because it seals the edges of the cut, preventing unraveling).  The only tricky part of the layout was the placement of the cut outs on the side pieces for the lazy jacks.  To get these right, I tied the lazy jack lines to the boom at their design locations, and then stretched a tape measure along the diagonal that the top of the sail cover will make, taking the measurements where the diagonal intersected the jack lines.

Then the depth of the cut outs needed to be established.  I wanted them to be just deep enough so that the top of the cut out, which will be the bottom once the stitching to make the batten pocket is completed, would be just above that seam in the finished product.  Here's the detail on that:  I had determined that a 4.5" circumference would make a batten pocket large enough to accommodate the 3/4" schedule 40 PVC pipe that I was going to use as battens.  Adding a 1/2" seam allowance, I struck a "fold-to" line 5" away from the top edge of the side piece.  Then I laid out the cut outs so that their ends were 1/2" (seam allowance) + 3/8" (allowing for the edging to be applied to the cut outs) = 7/8" from the fold-to line.

The rest was just sewing.  The cover is just shy of 12 feet long, and there is no place inside Eolian to stretch it all the way out.  But sewing it over the saloon table worked out OK.

I mentioned that I used 3/4" sched 40 PVC pipe for the battens (the gray kind, rated for outdoor use).  PVC pipe comes in 10 foot lengths; the sail cover is just shy of 12 feet long...  a splice was necessary.  I didn't want to use a coupling, since that would make a lump that would make feeding the battens into the pockets difficult.  It turns out that 1/2" sched 40 pipe has an OD just slightly larger than the ID of 3/4" pipe.  So I bought a short length of 1/2" pipe, cut two 12" lengths, a slit one side of each piece lengthwise on my little table saw.  That 1/8" kerf provided just the right amount of clearance to allow the 1/2" pipe to telescope into the 3/4".  Assembling with pipe dope gave me a smooth splice.

Almost done...

I added ties that go under the sail using black Sunbrella webbing and Common Sense fasteners (not visible in this picture - they're on the other side).

The top zipper would be impossible to operate if its aft end were not stabilized - a short strap there is seized to the topping lift line.  The finishing touch is a tiny block seized to the topping lift line just above the zipper seizing - and a 1/8" line loop routed thru the block and tied to the zipper pull allows the zipper to be operated while standing on the deck, not hanging over the rail.  Doing this work was interesting...  I had to swing the boom out over the dock and stand on top of a ladder to reach the aft end of the boom.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with closing off the aft end - I think I'll do nothing - the opening is not large enough to bother with.

I still need to make a front panel that wraps around the mast - the zippers that will attach it to the sail cover are already installed on the sail cover.

And I haven't yet cut the lazy jack lines to length - I think I am going to fiddle with them a little more - I want to see how things settle in with some use.


Previous post in this series

Sail Repair

Like most boat owners, Rick over on s/v Cay of Sea is a jack of many trades. Here he is working on his sailmaker badge...

The lesson here is that a sail’s stitching should be repaired before it becomes a tear in the sailcoth.

I just learned that lesson.

I’ve known for the past few sails that there was a section of stitching near the clew of the main that needed re-sewing. Yeah sure, I’ll get to it. Eventually. During a day-sail last week, eventually became immediately, as the foot of the sail tore out around the broken stitches for a length of about 12 inches. I pulled down to the first reef to finish out the sail, and took the sail down the next day to fix it.

I could have done this by hand with my Speedy Stitcher, but I have access to a marina neighbor’s heavy-duty sewing machine. It was time to give it a try.

Forthunately, I’ve watched my wife sew long enough and asked her enough questions to understand what has to happen with the machine – the concept of the locking stitch, what the bobbin does, what effect the tension knob has, and why a sewing machine is threaded the way it is – so I was able to figure out how to thread and adjust the machine, and how to refill the bobbin with a little trial-and-error.

I cut a patch to sew down over the tear, placed over the carefully positioned section for repairing with the help of double-sided sewing tape, and began to carefully feed it through the machine. Four times! This is a straight-stitch-only machine, so I had to make sure I had sewn down all the edges and fully supported the material surrounding the tear.

The machine is made by Thompson – heavy, strong gears and body allow it to punch through many layers of cloth.

In the photo above you can see the patch applied – it’s to the left of the seam opening – through which daylight is pouring! I repaired this open seam, and inspected the rest of the sail as well. I restitched down the entire length of the leach, as much of the stitching was weak or missing, and reenforced a few other places too.

Here’s an image of the repaired sail in use. The repairs aren’t beautiful, but they’re strong. And it looks like I need to adjust the wrinkles out of the trim too. . .

I discovered yesterday that I missed one weakened seam just above the first reef point – and it began to open up in the brisk breeze. I dropped the main as soon as I noticed it (see – I’m learning) and finished out the sail on jib alone. Today, I’ll take a closer look at it. This one may be small enough to repair by hand. If not, I’ll bring the machine down to the boat, simply pull the foot of the sail off the outhaul, and repair it right there on deck.

Finally, during a walk today through another marina in my neighborhood, I came across this beautiful lapstrake dinghy and though you would enjoy a photo of it.

Tender to s/v Hesper, featured in this post.

Snag Reduction--Or Tacking Without Tears

Tacking a boat is a time when all kinds of mischief can occur. With all the sails and sheets loose and being blown/flogged around, it is amazing sometimes what Murphy can pull off. Over at Sail Delmarva, Drew implements one of his typically elegant solutions to keep him in check:

Snagging the lazy genoa sheet on the mast-mounted winches has been my curse since the first day. The clew is just above the winch, and when it slides across the mast during a tack it just loves to loop over the winch, necessitating a trip forward. If I'm lucky, the boat doesn't fall into irons.

I tried a few simple bungees and covers for the winches. No luck. I tried better technique; OK when the wind was light, but otherwise undependable. I tried a line from the spreaders forward to the tramp; too hard to get the tack around. Finally I spent some time looking at it and found a simple solution that works the charm.

The Deflector. I ran a 40' length of 1/4 spectra double braid that I had left over from the end of the self-tacker traveler, through the lazy jack pad eye at the spreaders, and down to the other end of the traveler. It is tensioned with a truckers hitch, but not too tight, as the forces could get out of control. This keeps the sheets away from the winches AND away from the salon hatches , allowing them to remain open even when tacking. I thought it might be in the way, but in fact it makes a nice hand hold in an otherwise precarious area.

The sheet is held far away from the mast and hatch.

However, there is a significant tendancy for the clew eye and soft shackles to jam against the new deflector stays. I tried a few things before coming to a simple and entirely satisfactory solution; the sheets are now attached to the tack via a trianagular sliding bridle.

The Bridle. an 18-inch spectra climbing sling did the trick. It is luggage tagged to the eye and then each sheet is attached with a separate soft shackle. If there is any tension at all on the lazy sheet, the sling opens up into a triangle and sail clew is NOT forcibly dragged across the stay, only the sling. The clew eye is always free to move forward, away from the stay. Additionally, the shackles do not pass all at once, but rather in succession, reducing the drag.

 A bit tricky to see, but both sheets are attached NOT to the clew, but to the sling, along which they are free to slide when tacking. Both are attached with soft shackles; this is required because the windward sheets are inside the shroud and the reaching sheets are outside the shroud.

Not a single snag over many tacks in many wind conditions, from ghosting to 25 knots. Why does it take so long to learn simple things?

Sail Struggles

Walt and Kathy of s/v Suppose put their Sailrite LSZ-1 to work making sail modifications. [Sailrite LSZ-1 - don't leave home without it! -Ed]

In January 2013, we made the decision to modify our sail plan and brought the main and genoa sails to Lubbock. We ripped and picked the seams that attached the sacrificial sunshade and the furling wire on the genoa. The main sail lost its battens.

 In June, we purchased a new Sailrite LSZ-1 industrial sewing machine. This heavy-duty machine allows us to modify our sails, make protective covers and a large sun screen, and to reupholster seat cushions.

Because the genoa (140%) is our largest sail and had the most extensive modifications, we started with it. Oh, ambition! It has been a frustrating but satisfying exercise. Here are those modifications:

Triple stitch the broad seams. The broad seams are the ones that go across the body of the sail. Because the Sailrite does not do a true triple stitch (three small stitches to form each leg of the zigzag), we opted to reinforce the seams by adding another row of zigzag stitching. The greatest challenge of sewing on sails is the shear volume of cloth involved.

Replace furling tape with hanks. Many sailboats use furling systems to dowse their head sails. Our previous two boats had such systems, and we quickly became dissatisfied with them. On both boats, we had furler issues such as jamming that would be incredible issues at sea. For Suppose, we have opted to convert the genoa to an old school hank-on sail. To do this, we replaced the furling tape with a bolt rope on the leech edge of the sail. Then grommets were installed behind the bolt rope and the hanks were "seized" on the bolt rope.

This bolt rope bears all of the tension load when the sail is hoisted rather than the sailcloth. For this reason, Kathy created eyesplices around metal thimbles at both ends. The leather goes around the rope first to protect it from the chafing of the metal thimble. Then, the rope is spliced to hold the thimble in place.

Hand-sewn leathering prevents chafe while the webbing secures the thimbled eyesplice at head (top) of the genoa foresail. The contraption on my hand is a sailmaker's palm to prevent me from impaling my hand with the large needle needed to pierce the numerous layers.

One of three needles I broke or bent while hand sewing the leather chafe guards.

Shape changing

This post originally appeared on Windborne in Puget Sound

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Eolian's masts are canted aft.  This means that, if the booms are to be aesthetically and pleasingly level, the angles between the foot and the luff of the main and mizzen sails must be less than 90°.  Our mainsail was correctly built, but the mizzen was not.  Whether it was incorrectly built for the boat (unlikely), or it was an adapted mainsail (more likely), the cut of the mizzen sail was such that the boom drooped.

Further, flying where it does in the dirty air behind the main, the mizzen needs to have less draft than the mainsail so that it will fill properly.  In another indication that our mizzen is a re-purposed mainsail, it had a lot of draft.

One of the reasons for our acquisition of our Sailrite LSZ-1 was to reshape the mizzen.  And in particular the "Z" part, since this model does the zig-zag stitching that sails use.  So, an afternoon's project: recut the mizzen.

Before removing the sail from the boat, I measured (using a steel, non-stretchy tape measure) the leech of the sail when sheeted in.  Then I raised the boom to where I thought it should be and remeasured the leech.  The difference was about 7".

Next, with the sail on the floor at our cabin, I arranged it so that I could take a wedge-shaped piece of cloth out of the lowest seam, one that had no "complications", like a batten pocket or a second clew for reefing.  This was non-trivial - even tho it is a mizzen, the sail is pretty big, with a luff of 32 feet and a foot of 11 feet.  It just barely fit on the floor, with all the furniture moved away.

Tight squeeze

Next, I struck a chalk line from where that first seam met the luff to a point 7" below where it ended on the leech.  Then with the reference mark in place, I took apart the triple-stitched seam.

No going back now.

Then, allowing a 1" seam allowance, I trimmed away the long wedge-shaped piece of cloth from the lower panel.

Now all I had to do was put it back together.  My first attempt failed.  I simply could not manage all that cloth and keep the seam lined up.

A cloth management problem

So I ripped out my first attempt and I got out my sticky basting tape and stuck the seam together with it.  This is not the crap they sell in sewing notion stores, the stuff that is designed to wash out.  This is 3M stuff I got from Sailrite - it holds like, um, glue.

And this time I spent more time to carefully line things up.  I found that the draft in the sail was created on the bottom of the upper panel - the top of the bottom panel (to the right in the pictures) had been straight, and remained so since I used the chalk line.  But when lining things up with the basting tape, I did not honor the 1" seam allowance I had granted myself, since that would have recreated the draft.  Instead I just pulled the seam straight.  In the center of the sail, it turned out that I had 2.5" of seam.

The only tricky part was at the leech, where I had to be very careful to handle the triple-folded surface and keep the leech line from getting sewed in place.  Well that's not quite true.  Managing all that cloth is a real problem.  You can see that my carefully-flaked upper portion of the sail did not long survive.  It is important to allow the sewing machine to move the fabric, and that requires two handlers, one on each side of the seam, to keep a little slack in front of the presser foot, and to move the sewed section away from the back of the presser foot.  The sail is heavy and bulky; keeping that little bit of slack was not easy.

I triple-stitched the seam using Helios thread.  I see no reason to use anything but the lifetime-guaranteed teflon thread for any kind of outdoor work.

With the sail back on the boat, the boom hangs where I had hoped, and the sail is a lot flatter.  Now all I need is for the seasons to advance enough to take it out on the Sound and see how it looks when it is full of wind...

Marking Furler Line

Drew over at Sail Delmarva has a tip for those of us with roller furling sails:

I had always marked one spot on the furler line; the 100% setting, which I used when reefed. However, adding the inside genoa track prompted me to refine the system.

• Wide band: 110%, just short of touching the shrouds and spreaders. While it is possible to run a full genoa between the shroud and the spreaders, it risks sail damage and is more trouble than it is worth.
• Medium band: 90% Just short of lapping. A nice setting if single or double reefed, going to weather.
• Narrow band: 70%. Small, only 25 % of full area. Good for double reefed and blowing like stink.

To insure the whippings are tight and can pass the jammer smoothly, they should be smaller than the line. This is easily accomplish by holding the line stretched between 2 winches while whipping.

 
Yes, you can always adjust as you go, but rolling sail in a breeze isn't good for you or the sail. Advancing the furler line to the correct setting before unfurling is MUCH easier.

Recycling continues

Out on s/v Janna, an old sail is not a disposal problem, it is a resource! See what Petr and Jana have done with it...

When I was a small kid back in the communist Czech and Slovak Socialistic Republic, a friend of mine introduced me to this marvelous new gadget – a digital watch.  The Vietnamese throw them into the garbage when the battery is dead, said my friend. Yes, that marvel was battery operated.   I’ve never seen battery operated watch. Why wouldn’t the Vietnamese replace the battery instead of tossing the whole watch I didn’t understand.  My friend just shook his head and pointed out to me again that the fact that these can be found in garbage cans is what I should be concentrating on.

Surely I did peek to garbage cans for a while then before emptying the content of our household bin.  Yes, there were no plastic bags used then.  All went to the bin, we would fold an old newspaper on the bottom, and the bin would have to be cleaned from time to time, because it would start to smell quite badly.  I guess we were quite ecological back then, regardless of the fact that people didn’t know much about being ecological.

But the times they are a-changin’ and we buy and discard on a daily basis.  Those who take a screw driver and disassemble are breaking warranties and are being labeled as handyman or in more contemporary lingo as hackers.

I digress, however.  We try to remain faithful to our promise to the mother Earth and create as little garbage as possible. Thus, knife in one hand scissors in the other, I started butchering one of our old mainsails.  You see, right now we have three mainsails on board.  A very old one, then the one that was rigged when we bought the boat and now the new one, we just bought in Hong Kong.  The time for the other too has come, holes here and there and patches, chafed all around, grommets corroded, leech lines, stuck to the fabric.

I stretched that large piece of shred and started to plot my attack.  We need leecloths, helmsman awning, weathercloths, and couple of bags for lines, bag for cloth pins, there’s never enough bags on a boat.  So far we’ve been using plastic bags (sic), because there’s such an abundance of those things and especially in Taiwan, most things are usually packages at least twice.  Receiving piles of plastic bags seems unavoidable, but it’s time for us to say no.  Not to mention that some of the plastic bags are so noisy.

So after a few hours effort, we got new leecloths, bottom firmly screwed to our berths and the top hanged on the cabin handholds and a massive eye through bolted to a bulkhead.  We can stretch nice helmsmen awning, called “the square” over our cockpit.  Our 100m mooring lines are now stowed properly in their own bags, line flaked inside so that it can be let out quickly without snags.  And we have a new bag for a mainsheet in the cockpit (the photo of which will remain unpublished, because it’s a recycled cover from an outboard and it does not look particularly nice – but it works…).

In the conclusion I can say only this: Long live our fabulous Singer machine!

Dual purpose tell tales

Jeff on s/v Ces't la Vie solves a common problem with roller furling headsails - it's a simple and ingenious answer...

Seeking a break from the work in the engine compartment, I looked to the sails for a diversion.  We added a roller furling 130% genoa last fall and are very pleased with the increased performance and ease of use.

After using the sail for one winter, I realized two shortcomings.  First the only tell tales on the sail were aligned vertically with along the luff.  Unless the sail was fully extended no tell tales were visible.  When sailing to windward I rely heavily upon the forward sails tell tales to trim.  Secondly, with our roller furling sail there was no way to quickly judge the percentage of sail aloft.  "Did we unfurl a 80% jib or a %110 genny?"

With the sail off the foil for storm season the time is right to remedy the issues.  By strategically adding tell tales I hope to kill two birds with one stone.  C'est la Vie's "J" (the distance from her mast to forestay along the deck) is 184".  Thus the foot of a 100 percent sail on C'est la Vie would measure 184".  Each time we roll out or roll in 18.4" along the foot of our sail we are altering the sail area by 10%.  Ok this is Jeff logic so someone out there is welcome to correct me if my logic is flawed.

To provide an indication of the amount of sail out I placed new tell tales at 37" increments (18.4" x 2 = 36.8" rounded up) back from the original tell tales along the luff of the sail.  This will allow us to estimate sail area via the tell tales placed at 20 percent intervals.

Fully unfurled equals 130%.  Roll in to the next tell tale equals 110%. Roll in halfway to the next tell tale and we have 100% aloft.  Or perhaps more importantly if we roll out to the first tell tale we have a 70% head sail aloft.  You get the idea?  I placed three new tell tales along the lowest level and two at the second tier.

What to do with a retired sail? Part II

Jeff on s/v C'est la Vie continues with Part II of his project based on an old sail (you may want to read Part I first):

After viewing a couple free how to videos on zippers from Sailrite, I installed a 60" zipper into the side panel of the future paddle board bag.

Next my attention turned to handles / lash points on the top and bottom of the bag.  Concerned that the forces on the handles could cause the sailcloth to rip, I installed re-enforcement patches along the inside of the bag at the handle attachment points.

Using a zigzag stitch to avoid weakening the sailcloth, seven patches were sewn at 12" intervals along the mid-line of the bag.  

I then flipped the bag and utilizing the patches attached a continuous piece of one inch webbing to the outside of the bag.  

My next challenge is to create a slit in the bottom of the bag to allow the skeg to remain in place while the board is stowed in the bag.

Jeff refers to the videos available at Sailrite - I can't recommend them highly enough - they are excellent.

What to do with a retired sail? Part I

Jeff over at s/v C'est la Vie answers that question admirably in Part I of this project:

In the past our friends at Ella Vickers have received C'est la Vie's retired sails.  Ella will give you credit towards purchases for your retired sails - Ella Vickers Sail Exchange.

With a new paddle board, a retired mainsail, a sailrite LZ1 machine, and time on my hands.  I've elected to fabricate a storage bag for the paddle board.  Images from the project are available - Paddle Board Bag Project - Summer 2012

Earlier this summer we purchased our first paddle board.  We found the used Surftech 11'6" Laird board in Atlantic Beach via Craigs List.

The rocker (curvature) of the board prohibited me from simply tracing out the dimensions of the board on the cloth. So I measured cross section of the board every 12" and then drew this  pattern out on the sail cloth.

Once the pattern for the top of the bag was cut out, I draped it over the board for a quick test fit.

A couple hours of measuring, drawing, and cutting produced the three basic pieces of the project.

My Favorite Sail Ties

Drew over at Sail Delmarva  makes some proper sail ties:

In the West Marine catalog--or any supplier for that matter--they sell prefabricated sail ties for ridiculous prices. My boat came with 2 sets of 2 types. I tried some webbing with Fastex buckles--something I had. They all stink. We used some for other things and cut some up to use the materials for other things. All rubbish.

Having completed my Practical Sailor article on washing rope, I was faced with piles of clean ropes in various states of disrepair. Some was ancient crap, destroyed in the testing. A few bits tie Jessica's kayak to the car or the railing of the boat. Some remains in a basket, waiting some future purpose. Most puzzling was the new dock lines that were herniated and ruined in the washing process. I had 100 feet of new, soft 1/2-inch nylon dockline that simply had a tangled core. I pulled the core out--it slipped out in seconds--and played with both parts,  the core and the cover, while watching a DVD; something to keep the hands busy. Separately, they are so loose and and easy to splice, it became a game to see what could be done. Toys for sailors.

The core was pitched. Other than recyclable fiber, I couldn't dream a purpose. To loose and snag prone.

The cover is another matter. It's a sort of webbing, or a very hollow single braid rope, super-easy to splice. Just screwing around, sitting on the boat one evening while watching "Cast Away" for the 10th time, I found myself making sail ties from this, a sort of strop. It  felt old school and relaxing... and they are the best ties I have found.

• The material is soft and easy on the sails. 
• A brommel splice is fast and  few stitches lock it. 
• The eye is just large enough to pass a double over hand knot, which is nice and square and never slips out. 
• The flattened profile of the hollow braid grips the stopper knot better than round rope, without need for an overly tight eye. 
• The pointed tail makes threading them simple; I can take put them on or take them off in the dark with gloves on, in moments.
• There is no hard buckle or bozo ball to step on.
• There is no knot to seize-up after wet dry cycling.
• They are not adjustable (you can move the knot, of course), but if made to fit there is no need.

Try it. It seems wasteful, just using the cover, but short bits of used rope should do. Normally old rope cannot be spliced, but I think you'll find the cover alone is different.

I swear, I'm not that cheap. These real work best for me! Well, maybe I am.

Visibility

Lotte on s/v Lunde hoists her new storm sails...  her neon orange storm sails, that is.  Why aren't all storm sails colored like this?  If your boat is in difficulty requiring a rescue, it is likely that you will be flying your storm sails (if anything) - what a great attention-grabber!

Pang-colored accessories

I actually really like the orange - but these rags, I hope not, we will need to flash too often.

One of the day's chores was to get hoisted storm sails to get measured the length of the neck, find shot points and otherwise just get an idea of ​​how they should sit. For it should happen that one day they must be, there is a guarantee that the weather is bad snot. So we could put them both wearing seasickness, numb fingers and poor vision.

(I really like the new paint on the bow, Lotte!)

5200: Sailmaker's tool

3M 5200 sticks to everything, and is for all intents and purposes a tough, permanent adhesive - right?   Can you think of a better sailmaker's adhesive?  Livia on s/v Estrellita 5.10b shows us how in another in her continuing Haul Out series:

One of the things I wanted to do while the mast was off (and the sails were off as a result) was to examine all of sails.

I made it through the main, the jib and the genoa which, considering the path of the haulout, I’ll take as a success.  Other than one known issue (below), the sail slides that I changed out, and some sunbrella stitching that needed touching up, everything looked great.  All of the between panel stitching was intact, the head, tack and clew of the sails were in good shape and the “edges” (luff, foot and leech) were solid. In essence, what I did was to look at the general state of the Dacron (good) and then walk through every line of stitching looking for broken stitches (from chafe, UV or both).  Our sails are double and triple stitched everywhere so a single broken stitch or a small patch in one line of stitching isn’t a big problem – although you have to ask yourself why it was failing in one area and see if there is chafe that should be attended to.

Speaking of chafe (*snort*), the leather chafe gear that I added to the jib 10 months ago looks good with only minor signs of wear – the wear meaning that it is doing its job.



We had two fairleads on the mainsail for our Dutchman system that had popped off.  There are two halves, one on each side of the sail that snap onto each other through the sail, but ours are old and apparently too warped to stay snapped on.  One departed when the monofilament line broke and one just popped off and sat flapping on the filament.  We’ve had a number of people try to scare us about our Dutchman system – saying that if a fairlead failed the monofilament would saw a hole through our sail.  I can see how that could happen but because we loosen our Dutchman when the main is up, it seems like that wouldn’t happen for quite a while and one would have a chance to notice it and fix it.  We have no idea.  However, our old main still has a lot of life in it.  The Dutchman system is already cut into the sail and makes dropping and reefing the sail a cinch…so we’re keeping it.  Someday, when we get a new main, we’ll have a decision to make.



The fairleads are ridiculously expensive and thankfully our cool local sail shop (Leitch & McBride in Sidney, BC – they’ve done several jobs for us including installing a third reef) had some used ones.  Because the Dutchman system will be on our main until we replace it, I used some flexible, fast drying white 5200 and glued those puppies back together making sure that there was 5200 between the little snaps that connect the two pieces.  With a little weight to make sure everything stayed aligned, it dried as designed.

   

5200 is a dangerous toy because it should only be used on something that will “never” need to come apart…for that reason this seemed like the perfect use.  We want the fairleads to *never* come apart again.

Carbon fiber, tapered battens, and a slack leach

This project is a copy of an article originally published at Sail Delmarva, reprinted here with permission. This is not a large project, but it is a large post...

Before: different boat, but same model, same sails, identical problem.


I admit it; I'm cheap. And I enjoy fixing anything I can, to prove I can. If I have to fix it though re-design, that's even better, and if the repair method is unusual... better still. I'm a tinkerer.

The main sail leach on my boat had been falling off to leeward in a terrible way, as much in light winds as stronger stuff. No just an inch or so - a regular S-shape as much 12" to leeward. Another PDQ sailor mentioned that thicker battens had been installed in his main by a sail maker and had worked for him. Being cheap and willing to make a simple thing more complicated, I decided that tapering the battens by stiffening the back 60% with carbon fiber TOW (tension oriented weave or unidirectional fiber) would do the trick and not thicken them so much that they would not fit the pockets. After all, most beach cat battens are tapered. The draft of a sail is tapered - more in the front, and less as you move aft. And it was also a fix and improvement I could finish for the next weekend!
Batten stiffness is rated by the weight required to deflect a 40" sample by 4". The original battens were 3 pounds for the upper 2, and 4 pounds for the lower 2. The lamination changed this to 8 pounds on uppers and 10 pounds on the lowers, exactly what my back-of-the-envelope calculations using internet carbon stiffness values predicted. Unidirectional carbon works for this project because it is that it is not just stronger than glass, but also much stiffer. If you were to substitute glass it would take many layers and the battens would get too thick to fit the existing pockets. Unidirectional fiber is required; more of the fibers are oriented in the correct direction and they are not deflected into a serpentine path by the cross weave.The forward part of the batten remains nicely flexible. It seems so obvious; the battens on my Prindle were tapered, and in proportion to the PDQ, much stiffer at the leach that the stock PDQ battens.
A simple job, really, easily accomplished:

• Sand the batten.
• Cut the TOWs to size.
• Laminate one layer of 1" wide by 11 oz. graphite to each side. Taper fibers to avoid a hard spot. I did this by ending the fibers about 6" differently on opposing sides.
• Sand lightly and add a second coat of epoxy.
• Sand lightly again, by hand, 220 grit or finer, to get any sharp spots.
• Epoxy again. Optional; I didn't.

The carbon tow came from West Marine, though it is not in the catalog. Defender Marine has a 3" x 50' roll (http://www.defender.com/product.jsp?path=-1|10918|16458|309345&id=12428), though I think I bought a `15' roll, and that was just enough. I split the 3" roll to long 1" strips with sharp scissors - delicate because it tries to fall apart, but not difficult. There were no tricks to the laminating, other than starting at the leach end of each batten, adding resin to only about 1-foot of each batten and letting that soak while I added resin to the first 1-foot of the others, and then going back to the first to finish the full length. Doing it this way keeps the fiber in place, rather than having it creep as you brush the resin toward the luff end.

I am still going to re-cut the sail. I believe I need to remove ~ 3/16" out of 2 seams, 50-70% of the way up. The "after" photo shows some residual sag. But the stiffer battens were a huge help on the sag and treated some vertical wrinkles as well. I will be happy until fall.
An easy project for any boat with full length, un-tapered battens. Like so many engineering projects, it is invisible when well done... but I appreciate it whenever I look up, I found myself able to walk away from a couple of well-sailed 45-footers (all sail boats heading the same way are racing), and my pocketbook appreciates receiving a few more miles from a good sail. The speed difference is appreciable.

After: not perfect, but much better!

A typically thorough engineering treatment from Drew.