Anyone bought a sail through this site? Opinions?

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Tom Boles

I need a new Jib for my soon to be boat, a hunter Vision 32. For a variety of reasons, I may not be able to go down to North or UK or even Pineapple, one of the premier independent lofts here in the SF Bay area, and just toss down my credit card and tell them to build me a new jib. The local HalseyLigard loft quoted me $1100 and change for an all-singing all-dancing 110, so I am looking for alternatives. So. Has anyone here bought a sail here online? Care to talk about the experience? How about the sail itself? What do you think? Share the info!
 
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Steve

Yes...Good...Good...and Again

Answering your questions: Yes, I bought an ASM. It was a GOOD experience. I had a lot of questions, and we E-mailed and phoned back and forth for a couple weeks. HOW was very easy to deal with, and they made sure I was satisfied before the order was placed...even though they had all the credit card info for a couple weeks. The sail was all that it should have been, delivered earlier than promised. If you are doing something like going for a racing sail for a particular application, then you might go with a local loft co the sailmaker can go out on your boat. However, if you want a cruising sail replacement, I don't think HOW can be beat. It was a GOOD experience, and I would do it AGAIN. Steve
 
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Mike Webster

New Jib

Hi Tom, I'm getting my new jib from Mack Sails in Stewart Florida. They have done another Vision 32 last year, but I still sent in all the measurements to be sure there were not any differences. I should get the jib this weekend, and can let you know what I think next week. I received my mainsail from them last weekend and am very pleased. I checked a lot of lofts, including this site. If you want a strictly standard sail, this site is pretty good. They use Doyle sails. As soon as I started asking more technical questions, they had me contact Doyle directly. Most lofts seemed to want to offer either a stock sail or the top of the line racing sail. I wanted something in-between that would perform somewhat better than stock, but would last much better than a pure racing sail. Travis at Mack Sails offered some nice alternatives. For the main, he suggested a 7.62 oz Mainsail with Challenge High Aspect dacron sailcloth, double reefs, full battens, cunningham, leach Line lead over head of sail for ease of adjustment, and batslides on all battens, for $2785. Check out their website for full construction details. Most of their standard details are added features with other lofts. Believe me, battslides don't come cheap. For the jib, I thought about a laminate for better shape holding. Travis steered me away from that because a laminate on a roller furler in our high humidity area is a magnet for mold and mildew. He suggested 110 % jib with a White Sunbrella cover, with a low clew with maximum overlap, made out of Twaron Penstripe by Challenge Sailcloth, wt is 5.4 PK 15000, for $1230. This is a woven sailcloth (woven cloth breaths)using PEN fibers (Polyethylene Napthalate). It is most commonly sold under Challenge Sailcloth's tradename Pentex. Stan-dard Polyester (Dacron) is short for polyethylene terepthalate or PET. PEN fibers have the identical initial breaking strength as PET yarns, but PEN fibers have 2.5 times less stretch than polyester yarns. The twaron penstripe uses twaron threads (Made by the German company Akzo, Twaron is aramid product very similar to Kevlar, but with better UV resistance)in the high load directions to prevent stretch. Their price for a standard dacron jib with Sunbrella cover is $835.  I also purchased a Mack Pack sail cover for $572, plus $115 for a special mounting bracket. This is hundreds less than the competition, and they did an excellent job. It comes with a new set of lazy jacks. This set has 4 jack lines, vs 2 on the standard Vision setup. The standard setup lets too much of the foot of the sail spill off of the boom when its doused. The new setup is much better. Good luck with however you decide to go.
 
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Tom Boles

Hey Mike! How is the new sail working out?

Mike- How IS the new sail working out? I may be the only one, but I am interested!
 
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