Sail cleaning

[mellis18]

I am going to pull the sails off my Hunter 31 for some repairs and cleaning this winter. I have read some articles about ways to clean but I would like some esperienced opinions on the best way to accomplish this. My sails are dacron.

 

[redhead78]

I have a local sailmaker, family business, if I bring after boat is out he checks it for repairs and if you want, he has a guy in Maine, who comes down in a van after he collects say 25 sails, and professionally cleans them. I think it was around $2.50 -3.00 a pound. I am in the north jersey area, he is down by the raritan bay....Red

 

[Dan Johnson]

Check out...

the Sail Care site for a quotation on their work. They do a great job and are relatively reasonable. You can't stuff 'em in the home washer!

 

[Dean Strong]

Check out North Sales web site for washing sails in a wading pool in a mild bleach solution. Have done it and got good results.

 

[Cool_Change]

We floated ours in the swimming pool overnight once and then hung them up over some temporary lines (following the seams) to dry. Getting them professionally cleaned likely does a better job but if you want to save some $ this might be worth a try. Only caution is pick a day when your chlorine isn't too high...not sure whether it would be any issue but considering what pool water does to bathing suits after a while...

Since then we've converted the pool to salt and upsized boats but thinking of trying this again. The chlorine in salt pools is a lot less corrosive yet the salt content much less than seawater so I don't think will be an issue. Could hose them off too I suppose...

 

[kebr]

I used OxyClean and had good results. You could definitely tell a difference after I was finished. For the price, it was a no brainer for me. I used 1 cup per gallon of hot water. I used the same brush that I use for cleaning the deck, which made the job go faster. For tougher staines, I used a smaller brush and elbow grease.

I've heard good things about North Sails too. My plan was to try OxyClean first and if it did not turn out that well, I would take it to North Sails this winter, but I do not need to do that now.