the question was not what sails are "fine"...
...rather, the question was, and I quote, "Where is the BEST place to buy sails?" (emphasis added). I keep my boat in a port, Redwood City, where there used to be five chandlers. Today, there are none. Why? Mail order. If you want an actual store where you can purchase a block or a winch handle, you can travel south to Palo Alto and find a West Marine, or north to South San Francisco and find another West Marine. The closest independent chandler, Svendsen's, is the better part of an hour away. Not very convenient when all you need is a shaft zinc. Anyone noticed the price of shaft zincs at WM lately? There are only a handful of sailing lofts left in the entire SF bay area. Most of these are part of big chains. North. UK Halsey. Quantum. Doyle. We have one big independent loft left: Pineapple Sails. One. This is not about privileging one brand over another. It's about the fact that there are fewer and fewer options left to purchasing generic sails. The fine art of sailmaking is being lost, and we're all to blame. The relevance of my point about about the sails I used when racing one design is this: same boat, same rig, same material, same sailmaker, but vastly different sails fine-tuned to our needs. My argument has nothing to do with sailing a sport boat rather than a jalopy. They both need good sails. The argument, rather, is that I'm convinced that buying cheap, generic, mass-produced sails is a false economy, because they'll lose their shape so quickly that you'll end up paying far more in the long run, and probably sailing less. Higgs, I apologize for any inference you or anyone else made that you (or anyone else) doesn't care about the quality of your sails. The problem may indeed be that I care very little about my varnish; I use Man-O-War spar varnish that I purchase in the local hardware store. It lasts a year if I'm lucky, and I spent the better part of this morning applying a new coat. Unfortunately, I buy it in a chain hardware store (OSH) because my town no longer has independent hardwares. Or bookstores. Or.... Support your local sailmaker. When we lose them, we might as well all convert to trawlers.
