New sail, but should I keep it? w/ pics

[Maine Sail]

I just went to the barn..

THAT is a 'quality' sail 'finished' with elegant 'handwork', Maine. That hand stitching was probably done with either a sailmakers needle/palm or 'automatic hand-awl' - NICE !

I'd add a sun cover over those NYLON webs, though.

Hmmm... That's why I have been buying Rolly Tasker sails now for the last ten years they do great work.. I have never had a problem with the exposed nylon webbing failing even on 20+ year old sails but will keep an eye out..

I just went to the barn to dust of some retired sails to see what they looked like. Some of these sails had twenty years of service (not necessarily by me though).

Hood Genny @ roughly 15 years of service:

Sobstad genny about 15+/- years of service:

Doyle Genny 10+/- years of service with 5 being full time cruising:

North Sails Genny (Anson loft / NH) 12-15 years of service:

North Sails Main 22+/- years of service:

And the difference in the pictures is the difference in the price.

Actually I think it has more to do with the sail maker than the price. I have seen some pretty poor quality work come out of small local lofts and some pretty crappy stuff come out of big name lofts too. I have also seen some very good quality stuff come out of Phuket where Rolly Tasker owns the largest sail loft in the world. My sails come from Phuket and have for the last ten or so years. After eight of them, on four different boats, they have given me no reason to go elsewhere. If I was racing I'd go local but for cruising some of the "offshore" lofts do build a quality sail. Hell Rolly Tasker builds cruising sails for many unsuspecting buyers purchasing big name US sails, at big name US prices, through big name US lofts. They also build sails for many small local lofts too. They put the local lofts sticker on them right there in Phutket ..

It's usually the sail maker, not always the price, that dictates the quality..

 

[heath18703]

Thank you thank you thank you everyone for your help! So glad not to be in this alone.

Sailingdog, it's hard to believe but this is a brand new custom made sail. The head corner is all I've seen of it...haven't even gotten it fully out of it's bag yet. $1400.

Steve I'm sorry I can't tell right now who made this sail. All I can say is that this predicament is quite surprising as this sail maker was well recommended to me and I'm sure is used by a number of sailors here in this forum. I'm hoping the sail maker and I can come to a reasonable agreement on how to resolve this issue.

RichH thanks so much for your input. I've taken down all your advice and will be making all your suggestions a requirement for the sail that replaces this one. Yea, you would expect this kind of work to come from a deep discounter off shore sail maker. Scary thing is this sail came from a loft right here in the states, Florida even. As far as the other corners go, I'll get the sail fully out of it's bag and take good pictures all the way around soon and post back here.

For everybody else, DougM, Ross, bffatcat, Ron, Warren, Morgan30, thank you so much for your help. I've sent the sail maker this thread. I'm sure this will be a big help in negotiating how to correct this problem. I'll be keeping this thread updated on the latest developments.

 

[Prime Time]

Send it back!

Send it back and let us know who not to purchase from please!!

 

[heath18703]

Thanks big time Maine Sail. Now I've got a much better idea of what to look for.

I talked with the sail maker and although he's standing behind his refund offer, he's also standing behind his work and has insisted that that little material left on the ring is plenty. I'll be getting pics up of the rest of this sail soon as I can. Thing is I think the guy really does know what he's doing; he simply chose to let a shoddy sail go out the door.

Here's the latest high res shot. Feel free to zoom in..

After I sent him a link to this thread he sent me a rebuttal touting the strength of his work, asserting that the cringe was pressed through 9 layers of dacron, when in fact I could only count 7. Of course the concern being I could easily and directly probe the edges of those 7 layers.

 

[sailingdog]

Umm... it is NINE layers... seven are white, two are black...

 

[higgs]

I think the quality of work on Bradley's sail belies any evidence that this is even close to a quality loft. It is one thing for a loft to make a mistake, and a good one will back the product, but this is work no professional would even come close to doing under any circumstances. I have never seen anything that even comes close to rivaling the poor workmanship.

 

[sailingdog]

Higgs—

I'd point out that being a professional has little to do with the quality of the work they do and more to do with whether the IRS knows they do this for a living. There are some very talented amateurs who do work of a quality we which the professionals would achieve—Maine Sail's work comes to mind, but IIRC, he's not a professional boat builder or boat yard worker—though he was in the past.

 

[higgs]

My comment was not casting aspersions on amateurs who obtain professional results. It was meant to be critical of whoever built that sail and charged money for the job.

 

[sailingdog]

You're missing my point... Professional does not indicate a level of quality or standard. It never has. There are professionals who do high-quality work, there are professionals that do cr@p quality work... there are amateurs that do high-quality work, and there are amateurs that do a hack job...

For example, this is the result of a professional installation by Peter Kennedy Yacht Services:

According to the invoice, this was a $40 mounting bracket... note that the aluminum piece isn't even wide enough for the masthead tricolor light mounting screws to pass through, and the screws are being held in place with silicone sealant. Also, the aluminum "bracket" is essentially unfinished and has rough and sharp edges, it wasn't even put on a grinder to smooth the cut sides.

This is the professional installation of the GPS onto a swing arm rotating mount, where he only drilled three fastener holes, and used two screws, and one of the screws went into the Delrin nylon bearing for the rotating mount, preventing it from rotating smoothly and damaging the bearing.

My comment was not casting aspersions on amateurs who obtain professional results. It was meant to be critical of whoever built that sail and charged money for the job.

The OP's sailmaker and Peter Kennedy are obviously cut from the same cloth.

 

[jibes138]

Fix It

The sail in question may be fixed quite easily by disassembly and reassembly of the questionable area. I'd be more concerned with what does the rest of the sail look like. If this is the head the load from the halyard will run along the luff of the sail so having a nylon strap in the direction of the load will take most of the load. It doesn't look like the nylon strap is even tight. That area of the sail will usually have the main piece of sail cloth, followed by five layers of sail cloth of increasing area to spread the load, then around the edge of the sail is a folded piece of dacron to cover the raw edges of the sail. Then you will have the sunbrella or UV sun cover and finally the D-ring attached with nylon straps and hand laced to the sail to prevent it from twisting under load. The nylon straps take the load from the halyard, the hand lacing prevents the ring from twisting. The hand lacing is done with a very heavy waxed thread. All this is then covered by the leather that is finally laced in place for chafe protection.
I have built several sails for my own boat and this is the method I've always used. From my description count how many layers of material are on the final sail, it takes quite a sewing machine to punch through all of that. I think I count about 13 to 14 layers of materials. 6 the sail panels, two the edge tape, one or two the sunbrella (if it is hemmed under it is two layers), one layer of nylon webbing on each side of the sail, and a layer of leather on each side. Quite the sandwich. I use a speedy stitcher sewing awl to push through it all. Even that is a chore.

 

[newly anonymous]

here's how we know you bought a cheap sail:

forget the amateurish trimming. a bigger problem is that the webbing, which is not AV resistant, is outside the sunbrella. It's a lot cheaper to build a clew this way, but it will not last more than 5 years in the tropics because nylon is nylon.

you get what you pay for.

 

[higgs]

Sailingdog

This is a matter of semantics. IMHO there are professionals who are not and amateurs who are.

 

[rayz]

Bradley,

If the sailmaker has offered to make it right by taking it back or whatever, then he's at least trying to make you happy as a customer. If you aren't happy with the sail, send it back and ask him to fix it correctly or just send it back for a refund as you indicated that he offered. In my experience, sometimes things leave the shop without the boss seeing the final product.......

 

[jibes138]

A little closer observation

Look closely at the nylon webbing. The tripple stitching from where the webbing is attached on the opposite side of the sail is not in line with the visible side. This means the load along the luff of the sail will only be supported by the nylon on one side. The proper way to do this, I don't disagree that the webbing should be installed this way, is to have another piece of webbing attached on the other side that crosses over so that webbing supports the load on both sides of the sail.
I think the trimming might be related to the length of the luff with roller furling. In order to ensure the sail can be hoisted fully the sailmaker might have realized the luff was too long on the finished product and solved it by trimming off the excess on the head. Use of a hot knife is the proper way to trim material, it seals the edges from fraying, but materials are always hot knifed to size, then sewn on the sail, then the edges are covered with an edbe tape, basically sail material that is about four inches wide and folded in half. Trimming the finished sail this way leaves the edges exposed to the elements and it will start to fray on you very quickly.
Things to look for in a sail:
Are the sail panels double stiched or triple stiched? Meaning two or three rows of stitches on each seam? Does one row go right up to the edge of the seam to help prevent the sail cloth from edge fraying (since it is only heat sealed and not hemmed).
AS noted are the stitches locked at the end of each row by reversing direction? In other words stiching back over itself?
Hold the sail up to a light on each corner, how many reinforcing layers of sailcloth did they use. Since each layer is a different area, you will see all the seams, should be five layers of reinforcement, this distributes the loading into the sail from the stress points at each corner.
Sailmakers conundrum. How to keep down weight aloft which is very bad yet have adequate strength. Sounds kind of like an airplane design problem.
Labor is the other problem. Despite automating things like cutting out the sail panels on Gerber machines, or equivalent, and using computers to define the shape and flat panel edges of each section, the final assembly still takes a lot of hand labor toseamstick the panels to gether and se them with multiple rows of stitching, addint the edges tape, the rope luff tape, fitting the sun cover panels and gluing them in place then sewing those. Not a very high margin business, you can make a lot more money doing custom canvass work like biminis and dodgers.

 

[Ron20324]

If it's a case where you have to take this back to the sailmaker, look at his other sails and see how they compare with yours.

 

[NC-C320]

Your Sail

First of all, inspect the entire sail ...there may be other points for discussion with the sailmaker.

Second, the sail is certainly not as well built as some of the examples shown or some of the posts indicate. And certainly, you want the best sail possible for your investment, and it looks like some short cuts were taken. But you probably didn't pay as much as some of those "well built" sails that were referenced cost. And some of those more rugged sails probably were for larger boats which will have seen severe sailing conditions.

Now, the contrarian view:

I don't know where you will be sailing, how much you will use the sail, and how strong the winds are normally in your area, but the sail will probably work fine for the typical sailer. Most sail boats spend most of their lives in the slips, not sailing. The actual days of sailing are few and most of these, in most areas, are in mild to moderate wind conditions. The fabric is cut too close at the cringle end, but this is not where the support comes from. It's primarily from the clamping force of the cringle through multiple layers of sewn fabric plus the support of the strap passing through the cringle. Additionally, your boat is 27 ft. long, so the forces that the sail will encounter are significantly less than that of a 40 ft boat on an open ocean passage. Also, this is the head of the genoa, so much of the force on the sail is taken by the hanks or the furler along the leading length of the sail. From all the posts of what it should have been, I'm sure that you are terrified that this thing is going to fall apart, but that's not likely. Most of the sails that I've heard about don't fail in this area, but get a tear in the body of the sail (but I could be mistaken here), and this is reason to inspect the entire sail. And if it should fail under load (unlikely), such damaged sails can be repaired....maybe you can get a written guarantee for say 5 years that the sailmaker will make any repairs cost free to you for failures in this area.

 

[MrBee]

First, how did we end up with 2 different threads for the same post !!


My suggestion would be.... IF you want a refund get it NOW before you continue to post and before he gets fed up with the back and forth game your playing. You stated at the start of this post that he offered a refund but you continue to go round and round with it. If I was him I would get tired of the game and tell you to keep the sail ! DO you want a refund or are you going to continue to taunt him. He doesn't seem concerned with the strength and I bet the strength is fine. Just shoddy finish work.
WHY do you still have the sail if you want a refund. Send it back for a nicer finish....Send it back for a refund.... or keep it as is....What are you looking for ?? some thing extra ?? Seems to me the sail maker has given you the option of YOUR CHOICE ! What else do you expect him to do ???
Not trying to be hard on you, I would be pissed if that sail showed up at my door !! But as soon as the maker offered a refund I would have taken it or shut up about it, one or the other. IF you choose to keep it as is then it's YOUR choice, don't complain in the future.

My Guess is that you are willing to keep the sail but are continuing to go round in an attempt to get some of your money back so the total cost is less.

Sorry to be hard, nothing personal but it's time to S@#T or get off the pot.

Good luck.
Bee

 

[Ron20324]

MrBee, you're right, he needs do it or get off the pot. He has but two options, and he's only instigating those who read this thread, so let it die a death.

 

[higgs]

I would take the photos posted here of proper work, take them to the sailmaker, and ask him to make the sail look like these photos. If he won't, take the refund.

 

[higgs]

Another thought

You never told us what you paid for the sail. Many of us sail on big water and cannot always pick and choose our weather. We need good quality. On a small inland lake, the demands are far different. What are your needs?