Maine Sailing Partners

Then and now

From a 1939 Ratsey & Lapthorn brochure, "The Care of Sails":

New Sails

Almost everyone these days is familiar with the forceful instructions given the purchaser of a new motor car - instructions regarding the extreme care which should be taken in driving a new car slowly and carefully during the "breaking in" period, in order that the car may deliver peak performance over a long period of years.  Abuse during the "breaking in" period may easily result in poor performance and quick deterioration of a fine mechanism.

Exactly the same thing is true of a new sail.  The set and effectiveness may be utterly spoiled the first time you set it.  Carelessness and inattention during the early life of the sail may easily result in a shortened life.

From Maine Sailing Partners "New Sail Guide":

Break in

Your new sail needs no "break in" or special handling to start with.  It may be used in its designed conditions immediately.  Some new sails may take an hour or two of loading for the stitching to "settle" - to even out any unevenness in thread tension in the seams.  Also, highly coated fabrics - including those used in some one-design sails and some spinnakers - are more vulnerable to puncture early in their life.  It is always important to be sure that any part of your boat or rig that may come in contact with sails is free from sharp edges or protrusions such as untaped cotter pins.

Letter from down under

Almost a year ago we built a HydraNet jib for some folks cruising the South Pacific, which we had some difficulty delivering to Pohnpei.  Just received the following update:

Hi Win,
We are in Australia, just finished a two month refit in Bundaberg and are now headed for Sydney. We have done about 4000 miles since leaving Pohnpei, mostly off the wind but have done enough beating with the new jib to see how it performs. So far we are very happy with the shape of the jib and its performance. Going down in size has given us an extra couple knots of range on the top end where we needed it. It does not seem to have lost much, if anything in light air. We had the sail off while we were hauled and the cloth still looks new. From what I have seen I would definitely use this cloth again. In way of comparison, our new North dacron main that has about 7000 miles on it in the last year, is headed for a recut. We had it cut extra flat and it has stretched way out. It does see more use than the jib as we use it alone for running in the trades at deep angles and with the staysail or spinnaker depending on conditions. The size of the new jib allows us to pole it out without having to reef it. Merry Xmas and have a great new year.

Flex

MSP started using Contender's Maxx fabrics in the spring of 2004.  The first Maxx sail we made was a J24 genoa made of Maxx PEN 15.  The results were impressive enough that since then, we have made 3 more J24 genoas, 30 International One Design jibs, 3 suits of J100 jibs and mains, a J130 mainsail, and more.

Dimension-Polyant is introducing its own line of crosscut laminates for 2006.  Called "FLEX" for "Fill Laminate Extra X," DP's version of Maxx has a "'double X' pattern of yarns running double 20-degrees and double 30-degrees from the fill."  Dimension-Polyant claims in its Tech Spec newsletter that "the 20-degree X handles off-angle high loads (clew and head) and the 30-degree X handles off-angle low loads (mid-leech, prebend, boom vang)."

We've seen cloth samples, but haven't had the opportunity to make any sails out of FLEX yet.  We'll let you know what we think as soon as we do.

Kites

A couple of years ago, we were contacted by some of kite boarders from MIT who wanted to design and build their own kites.  One of our cloth suppliers had suggested that we could cut fabric pieces for them based on their 3D computer designs.  We spent quite a while working out the necessary bugs in converting what they had to something that could be used by our cutting machine.  Here's their first flight with the kite we cut for them.

Since then they have set up a web site and offer their designs for free.  They also list us as a possible resource for cut cloth. 

It's a pretty cost effective way to get yourself a kite, provided the only thing you have to pay us for is the material and the time we spend cutting it.  (We don't do the assembly.)  But if you have to pay us for doing work on the computer files we use to cut the pieces, the process gets expensive quickly.

Because of the MIT web site, we now get inquiries from all over.  Here's one from Lithuania, along with my reply:

Dear Mr. Win Fowler,
I'm from Lithuania and I'm making myself a power kite. I wonder if You coul cut the cloth for me and how much will it cost. Thanks in advance.

I'm looking forward to hear from You.

Best regards,
Giedrius Bulikas 

Hello Giedrius,

We have cut out kites previously.  We have no in-house patterns.  Here is what we need.

We need a file in HPGL (.plt) format for each separate piece of the kite.  The file should use a black 'pen' for the lines to be cut and a red 'pen' for the lines to be marked.

We need to know how many of each piece you need and the fabric and color from which you wish the piece made.

We charge the time we spend to do your job at $60 per hour.  We charge for the fabric we use at the manufacturer's list price.  Typical charges for a set of cut pieces have been between $200 and $300.

If your files are not perfect, we also charge for any time we have to spend cleaning them up so we can cut them.  That can get expensive quickly. If you send us the files you want cut, we can look at them and tell whether they need work or not.

Thanks for your interest.  Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions or if we can be of service in any other way.

Win Fowler

 

Spinnaker Seams

Many of our light weigh racing spinnakers are held together by glue. Here's Rob sticking together a very light J/29 spinnaker.  This particular adhesive is very strong in shear.   Many years ago our spinnakers seams were lap-fell seams created in a custom folder.  It was slow and difficult to do accurately.  Every inaccuracy in overlap, cloth tension or thread tension showed up a a little seam pucker.  These often went away after a few heavy air  sailing session.  But today's sails are smooth the first time up.
Here are a bunch of glued seams, good to go.

Charlie seams some carbon

Carbon is becoming a more and more common constituent of sail fabrics, especially for bigger boats.  Here you see a carbon cruising laminate by Dimension Polyant, being seamed in the Ontarian.

The nice thing about carbon, aside from its 'stiffness' (i.e., resistance to stretch), is the fact that it is imperious to light, especailly UV light.  Many of the the other high modulus fibers used in sailmaking gradually weaken when exposed to sunlight.
The problem with carbon fiber for us in the loft is that little escaped bits of fiber itch like crazy when they get on your skin, as they inevitably do when the fabric is cut.

Bolt Rope

One element most sails share is a bolt rope, a piece of line attached to the luff to help strengthen the sail and control stretch. We almost always enclose our bolt ropes in Dacron tape.  Often, we assemble rope and tape right on the sail, but when the bolt rope feeds into a groove and supports the sail, as it will on the 420 mainsails we are now building, we assemble the rope and tape in a separate operation.  As you can see, this can be a tedious project.

Sail Picture

Every once in a while we have to throw in a picture of a sail at work.  Here's one of Bruce Schwab's main after 20,000 miles.  Bruce's comment?  " She is beautiful, no?"

We know, we know, this kind of shameless self promotion isn't politically correct, but this is a company blog, after all.  Now we have to go put some lineament on the elbow we sprained patting ourselves on the back...

Handwork

The corner of the loft where we put the finishing touches on sails is called 'handwork' .  Work done here include punching holes and setting rings and grommets, riveting on headboards and cleats, and lots of hand sewing of corner webbings and slides.

The Ontarian

We have several sewing machines in the loft, but the workhorse of the stable is our Ontarian.
This is a machine we acquired after the '92 America's cup.  It has 6 feet of clearance between the needle and the arm, which makes it among the longest arm machines in the world.  It also has pneumatic puller and presser foot lifts, a compressed air needle cooler and a electronic needle positioning.  It sews both zig-zag and 3-step stitches.  It is our most frequently used machine.

Code 0

Over the past few years a sail called a 'Code 0' has become fashionable. The following is an exerpt from a letter sent out today to a customer on the subject:

The 'Code 0' is basically a cross between a spinnaker and a genoa.  By technical definition, a genoa can have a mid girth no greater than 1/2 the foot; a spinnaker can have a mid girth no less than 3/4 the foot. Code 0's are in that no-man's-land between the two.

 The original Code 0's were Volvo Ocean Race sails. The Volvo 60's were fractional rigs but we allowed masthead 'reachers' that could have a mid girth of no less than 65% of the foot. Paul Cayard's team developed a kind of cheater reacher they called 'Code 0' that measured at 65% mid-girth but actually flew with the luff folded back on itself so that the sail was effectively a light air masthead genoa (or very close reacher). The sail was so effective in its condition that by the third leg of that VOR pretty much all the teams had 'Code 0's'. Since then the sails have become fashionable. They can be quite effective for boats with fractional rigs, masthead halyards and sprits - especially those boats with non-overlapping jibs - because they can add so much horsepower for tight reaching, i.e., sailing too close to the wind for a spinnaker.

 On your boat, I think the advantage conferred by one would not be terribly great. I think you might expect to use it at apparent wind angles between 35 and 60 degrees, and larger angles in winds too great for your current asymmetrical. However, because [your boat] has a big masthead genoa already, I think the advantage would be small. It would probably be most helpful in shorthanded sailing. You could keep the #2 genoa on the roller furler and deploy the code 0 for light air upwind or almost upwind.

PHRF-NE crudely assigns a -3 sec/mile penalty for a Code 0 if your genoa is greater than 130% (-6 if less).

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Bainbridge and Dimension-Polyant must approve of Contender Sailcloth's Maxx fabrics.   

Contender introduced their line of asymmetrical laminated sailcloth last year.   Called "Maxx" for its multi-axial threadline,  we decided to try it in a couple of J24 genoas.  The results were impressive enough that we have since made a J30 blade jib of Maxx , and we have proposed using it in a number of other projects including a J105 jib, J130 main, and a fleet of IC jibs.  Even Bill Fastiggi of Vermont Sailing Partners is getting into the act with a C&C 99 genoa.

We've since heard through the sailmaker grapevine that Dimension Polyant will be making a similar fabric for Quantum Sails, and just this past Thursday Paul from Bainbridge dropped by unannounced with samples of Bainbridge's version of Maxx.   Will Challenge Sailcloth be next?

Our Hobie 33, Altercation, needs a new jib so we're going to give Bainbridge a try.  I'll let you know what we find out.