Whacking an Old Sail

Doug Christie of Lidgard made this sail for us in, oh, it must have been 1988 so we have had it for a long time. It was the primary racing sail for several years in Seattle, then we used it cruising for a number of years, and we used it again racing in Hong Kong and Singapore and it still did well for us in both countries. At about 20 years old that is pretty good for a laminated racing sail. But maybe we are not done with it yet: I got the idea that we can keep it a little longer if we cut out the worst area of weak cloth (the luff area where the Mylar is not backed by Dacron taffeta and the Mylar has failed completely)and at the same time create a slightly smaller sail for those light air days cruising in Asia when the 150% is just too much trouble.

I drew a long line from the tack to a spot in the leech about 3 meters from the top of the sail. Then I just whacked off all the cloth at the front of the sail, including the head patch and luff tape, along this line. This got rid of the latest hole and most of the bad cloth. I put the curve back in the luff (cutting off a lttle more bad cloth, and then I put the head patch back on and reattached the luff tape. Viola! We now have a 115%, high clew, #2 genoa which will be great for cruising. This whole job was about 8 hours and I did it all on the boat except for marking the lines which I did on the dock. I still need to put on a new spreader patch (only one is required now) and repair a few more weaks spots near the leech, but other than that the sail is ready to use and we can't wait to try it out.

If this works then it is probably the sail we need to have made in Dacron in the future (when this one finally finds it's way to the rubbish bin if it ever does).

Here are some photos of the project.

wingssail images
Sewing on Deck




Above:Smaller, higher clew
Below: New sail in bold line