Laminate sails on a cruiser?
- Thread starter VanIslandGuy
- Start date
Thanks for the wise words Jackdaw. I am leaning heavily towards full battens as much to simplify stacking the sail as to improve performance. There is a new tafeta I really like called Carbon Lite Skin that is supposed to be really decent in mildew prevention. It's not cheap but if it extends the life of the sail a few years it may well be worth it.
Curious what you meant by UV strips on the headsail. Do you mean a Sunbrella wrap that covers the sail when furler that is sewn to the outer edge of the sail like I have now or is it something else? I've seen sock headsail covers, but that's too much work for a cruiser.
Carbon Lite Skin is very interesting. My sails are made of the base DP carbon laminate, and I'd look hard now at that material. Would be interested in what the delta cost is.Thanks for the wise words Jackdaw. I am leaning heavily towards full battens as much to simplify stacking the sail as to improve performance. There is a new tafeta I really like called Carbon Lite Skin that is supposed to be really decent in mildew prevention. It's not cheap but if it extends the life of the sail a few years it may well be worth it.
Curious what you meant by UV strips on the headsail. Do you mean a Sunbrella wrap that covers the sail when furler that is sewn to the outer edge of the sail like I have now or is it something else? I've seen sock headsail covers, but that's too much work for a cruiser.
Yes wrap. Alternative is a sock which is nice for racing, not so much for cruising!
The sail material I chose for both the main and jib is Dimension/Polyant PXB15/10 s LS. The weight of the PXB15 is 5.95 sm/oz and the PXB10 is 5.3 sm/oz. Sails made by Evolution Sails (Jason Fanjoy of Vancouver). Sorry I wasn't supposed to mention the sail maker but others already did and Jason is in your neck-of-the-woods. Because I increased the power of the main, increasing the jib size made sense. Vertical battens on the jib helped but I also had some room to increase the luff length (jib remained at 110%). Helm is balanced well as a result. I also fly a code0 head sail along with the jib (like a cutter rig) and have a little lee helm. I'm playing around with a retractable bow keel to further reduce the lee helm when flying the two head sails. Here is a link to the bow keel build video I made:
I am still waiting for someone to tell me how they like their new
Sails.
There is a thread on Sailing Anarchy, but those guys are hardcore comparing them to high end laminate sails. Anyone here tried them compared to standard dacron sails?
Sails.
There is a thread on Sailing Anarchy, but those guys are hardcore comparing them to high end laminate sails. Anyone here tried them compared to standard dacron sails?
Have new North Sail Laminates would not trade them for dacron. We sail in the PNW Campbell River area with winds range 5-25kts last week in 15-18+ kts wind, reefed sails and sail shape stayed the same. We found that for performace over dacron we gained 1-1.5 kt just by sail shape holding and with less heel than before.
For lofts, I'm looking at only places where I can deal with a person face to face. I really like the UK Sails loft in Sidney. The loft is about 15 minutes from my folks house, and they have a dock you can come right into to get work done. I've also met and been impressed with Evolution and North Sails in Vancouver. I'll only go with a loft/design office based in Canada that I can get to by boat in under a day. That means Vancouver Island or Vancouver.
Chris from North Sails Vancouver came out to Campbell River and spent over 3 hours taking measurements so they can design the sail for the boat based on sail performace modeling.