Jump to content

Cruising sails - the perfect sail cloth


Grinna

Recommended Posts

So, with all this discussion lately about cruising sails I was wondering about sail cloth options.

 

If you were setting off for a multi-year blue water cruising excursion (perhaps 3-5 years and an intended circumnavigation) what would be the best material to have your sails made from?

 

Dacron is the classic, its durable and repairable, but it also stretches. Are some of the laminates and higher tech options better in terms of shape retention and longevity and what price do you pay for that (ease of handling, repair, cost, etc) bearing in mind that these sails will be exposed to a wide range of wind conditions, reefing, potentially furled on the forestay full time, etc.

 

I'm aware that sail technology has moved a long way in the past few years, just wondering what the new wisdom is regarding cruising sail technology.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Depends on your budget. Dacron is all good but lacks tear resistance, if a tear starts it will carry on thru the sail till it hits an edge or seam. The cruise lams are alittle better in this respect or woven dyneema/spectra like hydra net is nice. I wouldn't trust anything with Nor in the name :P

Link to post
Share on other sites

I just bought mylar cruising laminates. Even as a cruiser I wanted reasonable performance and figured I would rather enjoy god sail shape for 5-7 yrs then replace them when they die rather than only have 2-3 yrs of OK sail shape then another 15 yrs of grandmas knickers.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think one big issue we have down here in NZ, is that we as cruisers all tend to carry sails designed more for heavy air. But if you want to world crusie, you really need a wardrobe of much lighter air sails.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Well I won't be subtle Squid, cruising laminates are the only way to go.

 

Good sail shape is a critical component of sailing, note sailing, not racing and the proper control of shape cruising laminates offer is an order of magnitude higher than dacron.

 

If a cruiser doesn't think that proper control of their sails and from it proper control of their vessel under sail is the single most important thing they can do, they have no business being out there or worse, they want to be a launch, in which case I would suggest buying a launch not a yacht.

 

In our experience cl sails last at least as long as dacron and it's more than sufficient to do laps of the planet (note plural), they're as repairable on the fly as dacron, that they also perform better is bonus.

 

The only downside is initial cost and if people want to go offshore cheap in critical areas, to me they are saying they want to go offshore less prepared than they can be.

Link to post
Share on other sites

So markm, can you afford to spend say $50K on one sail??? Yes I realise it won't cost that much, I am trying to show that cost and cruising and those being prepared is relative. Unless you are a dedicated Racer with a very special boat, you would imagine spending $50K on one sail would be out of the question. But for someone with millions, spending $50K if that is what it cost, would be acceptable. So now if you bring that down to reality, where most of us are, Spending 5K on a sail maybe just as hard. Especially when that saiul is just one of many many important things on a list that has no aprticular order because they are all equaly important. Some of us just have to make do with what we can afford at the time.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hmmm.. an interesting thread.

 

I'd go for a bloody good sail cloth and be prepared to pay for it. Personally I'd go with a top end dacron as it seems to stand up to handling i.e. hoisting/lowering/stashing better than some laminates but then I'm knot up on the latest and greatest so it could change. I'd listen to the sailmakers reasons as to which and why as they should know. My chat with a sailmaker would be prefaced by 'if this turns to sh*t 5000mls down the track I will come back and stick the whole sail up your bum so answer wisely' though. I'd also lean a lot towards the 'tried and proven' over a 'this is the new latests and greatest'. As we know a lot of the latest and greatest just isn't.

 

And I'd pay to get good stuff. It's a yacht which relies on it's sails to get anywhere. Would you buy a long haul road truck and save a few bucks by fitting a 'Wonky Do 1500cc' motor? I think knot.

 

We see punters at work who are happy to run with a very minimal anchoring system to save coin to buy the 3 'must have' flat screen tellies. To me that is just ludicrous. There are certain bits of a yacht that are highly important to it's use and safety. Sails and anchoring systems are just 2, Flat screens just aren't.

 

I'd never skim on sails but then I'd also knot go stupid silly getting something handcrafted by 13 virgins with intertwined gold leaf.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Can someone in the know tell me the difference price wise , say main and furling jib for a 38ft offshore cruiser, one set good quality dacron ane set cruising laminate??? Then we'll know what we are talking about.

Link to post
Share on other sites

OK, to expand on Squid's question and to make it more relevant to me (yes, it is all about me) how about indicative costs for a sail wardrobe for a 47 foot offshore cruising yacht in both Dacron and laminate. I'm talking masthead rig full length batten main, 130% furling genoa, furling staysail and downwind sail (probably gennaker or similar).

 

Are laminate cloths that much more expensive than dacron? Are they that much better for cruising sails?

 

I understand that dacron may be the best choice for a fat ass traditional type blue-water cruising boat (because it may not make that much difference), but how about for a relatively modern designed fin keeler with the potential to actually be a very good sailer?

Link to post
Share on other sites

I will eagerly await that reply - I have emailed Kenny Fyfe (Crew Advertiser) to see what he says.

 

Meanwhile- if for the cost difference you could buy a feathering / folding prop and replace the three bladed fixed monster most cruisers have I believe you'd get a bigger jump in performance.

Point is lots of cruisers do really dumb stuff that slows the boat down way more than dacron sails.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Absolutely nothing, but i bet if you did a survey of the offshore fleet up in OPua most would have a bloody great 3 bladed wheel. Saggy forestays, weight and windage all over the decks - it goes on and on.

 

In the Cav 32 (not known as a rocket ship, but I did have an extra metre on the stick) it was rare for any other cruiser under 40 ft to be faster and I'd take on boats up to 50 ft and beat them (took 7 days out of a Force 50 ketch Tahiti- Hawaii)

 

What I'm getting at is that so many cruisers do abysmal things to their boats that turn them into pigs that a 0.5% performance gain from sails in kinda insignificant.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The inclusion of variables like the prop, weight, windage etc is making it harder for me to follow!

 

In my view, even if you quantify the percentage performance difference of dacron vs laminates, it is still going to come down to each person's individual response to the question: "Because I have overloaded my boat and turned it into a pig rooter, does that make me more willing or less willing to compound the issues by putting on sails that are going to load up, give me weather helm and become deeper at the very times when I want to be able to make them flatter?".

 

As some have pointed out, if you don't have the cash, you don't have the cash so those people are always going to vote with their feet (wallets) regardless of what information might be available about the benefits.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Absolutely Murky, speed performance isn't a significant consideration here, it's all about how the sail plan makes the boat manageable when things are adverse.

 

Myself, I wouldn't have believed CL would have made that much difference until I eexperienced it, after that it's an easy sell.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The "more sail for your money" graph for dacron must look incredible: the older they get, the more sail you end up with - you can literally see the f*ckers grow when a gust hits.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...