I need new sails. My sails are probably original. I need some guidance on what to purchase. I like the lite skin sails at BWY, but would I be better off purchasing the standard dacron sails and learning on those first?
New sails
- Thread starter kendyoozed
- Start date
Comes down to cost, looks and performance. Dacron is very affordable, plain white, has a reasonable life span but has a higher stretch and less performance than more modern fabrics. Laminate costs, potentially lighter weight, flashy looking, easier to furl in and out of the mast, offer higher performance, but more fragile. Whichever sail cloth you decide, suggest discussing their features and benefits, cost and construction details with your sail loft. I have had cross-cut Dacron sails built to offshore specifications for many years, but the last set of sails I recently purchased were tri-radial cruising laminate (Contender CDX Pro Grey 9/11) also built to off-shore specifications.
Last edited:
With this being my first sailboat that I am buying sails for I am looking for longevity and durability to withstand my learning curve.
kendyoozed, what are your goals in sailing? You are clear in that you are learning. That's great. What do you see as your sailing goals for the next five years? Are you racing? Just enjoying some picnic sails with a few friends or family? Are you expecting to work your boat hard or just take it easy and sail fair weather a few days a month?
If you are not a performance junky, go for the dacron and reassess in a few years when your sails are a little stretched out and ready to be replaced. It will be the cheapest way to go and sails aren't cheap.
You're just learning, there's no one to impress. Get high performance sails when you are a high performance sailor.
-Will
It sounds like you'd be perfectly happy with an online loft's coastal quality headsail and mainsail.
Mainsail: Dacron, loose foot, cross cut, full roach, two full battens, two partial, at least one reef point..but two is better.. tell tales, leech cord, cunningham cringle for sure. Pay extra for number and insignia but it's worth it to have them do it. For the headsail , at your level I would order a 110% medium weight jib with tell tales and leech cord. Also, you can also have the maker install "draft stripes" on both sails for extra charge, you'll find them really helpful when trimming. Okay... here's the deal. To get the best prices you'll have to do your own measurements, and no one is going to come out to the boat and help you with anything.. You send them the measurement, tell them the the extra goodies, send them at least 1/2 down payment... and when the sails are finished, you send them the balance and they send you the sails. Again, nobody from the loft will likely come and help you.... That's it. All the terms and features I mentioned will be explained in their website ordering pages.
If this sounds intimidating, it is NOT. All the online makers will have a complete instruction set on how to measure your boat for sails... it's really easy. In fact, doing your own measuring will teach you a lot about what every sailor should know about sails and his boat. Some time down the road, should you want to get more serious about performance, and you have packed away extra moolah in your sailing kitty... you may start jonesing for a baddass, deck sweeping, laminated, carbon thread genoa for upwind and a killer star cut, top down furling, code bazillion for reaching... but... probably that won't happen before you actually sail the keerap out of these cheapo, made not in the USA, journeyman rags.
Take the money your save and get some other really important stuff. Like a tiller pilot, and good quality PFD's with harness' for you and your crew. Get a good pair of binoculars. A hand bearing compass. A good quality chartplotter ...(7" B&G Vulcan. I highly recommend) and a fixed mount Vhf with AIS. You can connect these two so the AIS targets will show in the chartplotter display... really cool) In fact you can connect a whole bunch of neat stuff to the chartplotter... like the tiller pilot and the wind transducer.
As far as online sail lofts, I've heard good things about Doyle. But you can save even more by going to shops that stock sized sails for popular boats... C22 fits in that category, of course. Finally, one thing that everyone here will agree on... there is nothing that will improve your boat's performance more than new sails...( a clean bottom on your boat is assumed... because that is THE most important thing)
Mainsail: Dacron, loose foot, cross cut, full roach, two full battens, two partial, at least one reef point..but two is better.. tell tales, leech cord, cunningham cringle for sure. Pay extra for number and insignia but it's worth it to have them do it. For the headsail , at your level I would order a 110% medium weight jib with tell tales and leech cord. Also, you can also have the maker install "draft stripes" on both sails for extra charge, you'll find them really helpful when trimming. Okay... here's the deal. To get the best prices you'll have to do your own measurements, and no one is going to come out to the boat and help you with anything.. You send them the measurement, tell them the the extra goodies, send them at least 1/2 down payment... and when the sails are finished, you send them the balance and they send you the sails. Again, nobody from the loft will likely come and help you.... That's it. All the terms and features I mentioned will be explained in their website ordering pages.
If this sounds intimidating, it is NOT. All the online makers will have a complete instruction set on how to measure your boat for sails... it's really easy. In fact, doing your own measuring will teach you a lot about what every sailor should know about sails and his boat. Some time down the road, should you want to get more serious about performance, and you have packed away extra moolah in your sailing kitty... you may start jonesing for a baddass, deck sweeping, laminated, carbon thread genoa for upwind and a killer star cut, top down furling, code bazillion for reaching... but... probably that won't happen before you actually sail the keerap out of these cheapo, made not in the USA, journeyman rags.
Take the money your save and get some other really important stuff. Like a tiller pilot, and good quality PFD's with harness' for you and your crew. Get a good pair of binoculars. A hand bearing compass. A good quality chartplotter ...(7" B&G Vulcan. I highly recommend) and a fixed mount Vhf with AIS. You can connect these two so the AIS targets will show in the chartplotter display... really cool) In fact you can connect a whole bunch of neat stuff to the chartplotter... like the tiller pilot and the wind transducer.
As far as online sail lofts, I've heard good things about Doyle. But you can save even more by going to shops that stock sized sails for popular boats... C22 fits in that category, of course. Finally, one thing that everyone here will agree on... there is nothing that will improve your boat's performance more than new sails...( a clean bottom on your boat is assumed... because that is THE most important thing)
So I was looking at sails for my M25. My current sails are not bad but I wanted new and to use my old ones as a backup. I looked at BWY and was not that impressed with the prices. I called a couple lofts and i got the best warm and fuzzy from Precision Sails in BC. One loft (can’t remember the name) laughed at me and said they don’t make sails for junk boats like MacGregors. So do call around and check prices, I’m pretty sure you can get a good set of sails for a reasonable price and better than BWY offers.
Ill start doing some research into what i can find for sails. I am just looking starting out doing some day sailing and coastal cruising camping. I was wondering if the BWY sails were of decent quality for what I would need.
when I had a Mac 26D I replaced the sails with 1 155 furling head sail never missed using the main. Most of the time when I sailed the winds were 10-15 kts.
I can’t speak to the quality or even where they get their sails. I called them and talked to them about sails and they basically said they are cut to MacGregor’s specs and that was about it. When I talked to Precision Sails they were more concerned about making sails specifically cut and configured to my boat, and my current equipment. That left me with a better feeling, as well as they were cheaper overall.
The sail I ordered from BWY came from Rolly Tasker, which I believe is their main supplier. Other providers are brokers for RT, and I am happy with my RT mainsail and genoa. They sell budget sails (like mine) and have higher-end offerings as well.
I personally can't justify spending a lot on sails. If you can, then do. I have watched a lot of boats with high quality sails and they appear to hold their shape much better, especially in light wind. I liken the quality of the sail to the quality of a musical instrument. Just like it is harder to learn to play guitar with a cheap guitar, it is more challenging to learn to sail a boat at peak efficiency with cheap sails. High quality sails will sail better from the get-go and last longer.
I personally can't justify spending a lot on sails. If you can, then do. I have watched a lot of boats with high quality sails and they appear to hold their shape much better, especially in light wind. I liken the quality of the sail to the quality of a musical instrument. Just like it is harder to learn to play guitar with a cheap guitar, it is more challenging to learn to sail a boat at peak efficiency with cheap sails. High quality sails will sail better from the get-go and last longer.
Got a quote from Precision. Prices are about the same at BWY. Precision has a lead time while BWY has them on the shelf ready to ship. I think the BWY is made by Rolly Taskers and I’m not sure of their quality.
I have three Rolly Tasker sails, and I feel they are of reasonable quality for the cost. I can see minor imperfections in my mainsail (slight angle in the curve at the luff end of the top batten, slight ruffles near one of the seams). I had to replace the leach telltales as the ones supplied curled up like little pig tails after a few uses.
The jib I got through BWY was advertised with bronze hanks, but came with twist-on plastic hanks. That would not have been a problem but for the fact that they were intended for use on a 3/16" forestay, and mine is 1/8", so they would come detached from the forestay when the sail was lowered. BWY made it right, but it was still annoying to deal with.
RT has higher end offerings, but I have no experience with them so I cannot comment.
The jib I got through BWY was advertised with bronze hanks, but came with twist-on plastic hanks. That would not have been a problem but for the fact that they were intended for use on a 3/16" forestay, and mine is 1/8", so they would come detached from the forestay when the sail was lowered. BWY made it right, but it was still annoying to deal with.
RT has higher end offerings, but I have no experience with them so I cannot comment.
Thanks for the info. Todd at BWY has been spot on with any questions I have had and even pointed out that my boat, although titled as an 88 it must be a late model as it has an 89 deck layout. So I'll probably just get my sails through them at this point. And then after a few seasons get their big jib rig kit and the lite skin sails.
Yeah, I was at their site and saw those Lite Skins and the big jib kit. Probably what I will go with when I switch over to roller furling.