Well I now have the "blade" sail for the 2005 Capri 22 TRFK. I thought I should give some feedback to this group who helped me with thinking it through.
First the facts: bought from FarEast Sails, luff: 27'6" Leach: 25'9" Foot: 8'2" Cloth: 5.93 all the bells and whistles, vertical leach battens, luff foam, tell tails and window, sun cover, leech and foot lines. Pictures attached.
I am very happy with this sail. I have had it out now in a good wind of ~ 14kts and again in very light winds of ~ 3 knts. Early concerns about it not moving the boat upwind in light winds were unfounded. The pointing ability is noticably improved. As expected, I do lose speed downwind and without a whisker pole one needs to jibe around a bit.
Now for the buying process. You fill out their order form after taking measurements. They then send the form to a CAD guy who gives me back a CAD drawing of their proposed sail. They tell me I can repeat that CAD drawing process as many times as I like, until I am convinced they are going to give me the sail I am expecting. The first run-through was bad. My measurements were fine and I gave them everything they asked for. But subtleties don't get piced up on the form. For example .. they ask for "clew height above the deck". That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, when the track is on the cabin top. A better measurement would be "height of the clew above the tack". Then I would know what I was getting. The second go round was perfect. I gave them my own measurements very carefully done, for luff lenght, leech length, and foot length. I simulated the sail on the boat using no-stretch material to get a good idea of how it would fit. A couple of weeks later it showed up on my doorstep. The quality of the work is impressive.
I knew I would need to modify the cabin top track. I added a new track which was forward by another 6 inches or so. That was necessary to give me a more vertical pull on the leech for good leech control over this high aspect sail. 6 inches is huge when the clew is so close to the track. Not a big job at all .. most of the existing holes were re-used. See picture.
Bottom line .. it is important to take charge of this project. There are three people involved .. the broker I talk to, the CAD guy in the background, and some loft employees cutting cloth. There is not a lot of thinking by anyone .. you have to do that. Buying locally is always nice, but the savings are really too hard to ignore.
cheers and I hope this helps someone else
Dave
