Jump to content

Cruising sails - the perfect sail cloth


Grinna

Recommended Posts

Bollix Mr Data Lord, if I maybe so bold as to say that.

 

Speed is important, but only to a point I will admit. Sure we aren't talking AC speeds but why make a boat go slow on purpose with sh*t sails. Most cruisers already make their boats a lot slower by carrying masses of gear. Why add to that for the sake of a couple of K.

 

A 4kt shitbox is going to take 2 days longer to get to Fiji than a 5kt semi-shitbox. 1kt can make the difference between getting caught in a storm and missing the worse of it. Sure you don't have to use all the sails potential if you so desire but if you need to move quick, as sometimes does happen, having a reserve is handy. And i'd suggest the 4 verse 5 number is probably a real life average for a large section of the crusing fleet.

 

And a yacht that can't sail to windward is a waste of space, sink the fecker now. This bullshit about cruisers knot having to have to sail to windward is indeed just that, bullshit.

 

If speed or going to windward is no concern buy a fecking scow and enjoy the extra space while on that 2 month long trip to Suva.

Link to post
Share on other sites
A 4kt shitbox is going to take 2 days longer to get to Fiji than a 5kt semi-shitbox. 1kt can make the difference between getting caught in a storm and missing the worse of it.

Now that is probably one of the most interesting pieces of info I have seen on Crew. I wouldn't have thought 1kt would have equated to so much time.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Its alittle hard to compare the price of dacron vs cruise laminate because there are so many different dacrons and cruise laminates. i.e. There are 4 big companys that make sailcloth and each one had between 3 and 5 different dacrons and 2 or 3 different cruise laminates. Some dacrons are more expensive than some cruise laminates. Cheap dacron will get little holes in it within 3 or 4 years etc You can get cruise lam with kelvar/carbon or pentex fibres inside rather than polyetser. In general a cruise lam sail will cost alittle more, most are triradial cut which has higher wasteage and more labour, although you can get cruise lams for cross cutting now.

 

The performance advantage in cruise laminate only relates to upwind or close hauled which cruisers try and avoid. It really depends on budget.

 

www.lytsails.co.nz

Link to post
Share on other sites

You may be so bold KM, despite owning a Ross, but only because my gentler racing side, which being a sensative new age sailor I am always in touch with, agrees with your sentament.

 

Me, I always like to sail at least mildly efficiently, but I can understand at least in the abstract and likely a parallel universe, that this may not be important to everyone, odd and perverse as these people undoubtedly are.

 

I do like this idea though of sailing only downwind, where do I sign?

 

The idea that good sail control can translate into a more comfortable passage is still valid, accepted you aren't always sailing downwind. If you are of course, save your money, spend it on cheap booze and women (donkeys or whatever as your preferences dictate).

Link to post
Share on other sites

For a split-second there, I thought you might have just matched KM's boldness and raised him one boldness by calling him a lover of cheap donkeys. But now I don't think you did. Or did you? This subtlety business always gets the better of me. :wtf:

Link to post
Share on other sites

Here are some prices done for a 35ft performance cruiser.

Mainsail (3 reefs 4 full battens)

Cheap Dacron $4,452

Premium Dacron $5,337

Cruise laminate (polyester/mylar) $5,699

 

Furling genoa (UV leech and foot, luff flattener)

Cheap Dacron $3,804

Premium Dacron $4,557

Cruise laminate $4,808

 

So you can see there is a huge jump between the cheap and the expensive Dacron. They are the same polyester fiber(Dacron is just a name for the style of cloth not the fiber) but the difference is in the finishing (resin and consistency) and the tightness of the weave. Obviously a tighter weave helps hugely in both tear strength and bias stability and that translates to better shape holding and durability. Also the amount of resin and the consistency of the finish is also important. Some cheap dacrons have loose edges meaning that when you pull it out on the plotter the middle is tight and both edges are loose. Some also have only one edge loose so the cloth has a curve (same thing with cheap spinnaker fabrics), where as the premium Dacron always sits flat on the table.

The cruise laminate is the same fiber (polyester) but in a completely different construction. Either polyester yarns laminated between mylar and with a light woven polyester layer on the outside or as we do at North Sails it’s a mylar layer and a diagonal ‘X’ ply on the inside with a much heavier woven polyester layer on each side, so for say a 7 oz cruise laminate you have 3 oz of Dacron on each side and 1 oz of mylar on the inside, this means that you get more durability with the thincker woven outer layer without adding the weight.. The mylar works like the resin, it holds the weave together (mylar is not actually a fiber but a plastic, the same as supermarket plasticbags but heavier) and give it the bias stability (along with the X ply) and the polyester giving it the load bearing strength. You then get different fibers within the range, Spectra, Kevlar and carbon are making appearances in the cruising world too.

The other big difference between Dacron and laminate is the warp (along the load path) and the Fill (across the load path) direction orientation in the cloth. The Dacron has the strength across the roll (ie if you roll out the cloth the strength is going from side to side) where as the laminate has the strength along the roll allowing radial construction where the panels align the load thru the sail, Dacron sails are usually cross cut meaning that there is no load alignment other than straight up the sail. There are radial dacrons but they are expensive due to the dificultys weaving them. Its hard to get the load bearing yarns to be tight and the fill yarns to be the ones doing all the ‘weaving’ around the tight fill yarns( obviously you want the load bearing yarns to be the straightest and the fill yarns to just hold them in place). There are also lots of different type of dacrons, high aspect with more load bearing warp yarns and less fill yarns, and low aspect with more equal fill and warp yarns.

 

Fixing the sail is the same regardless of cloth type, If I was heading on an extended cruise I would take a few meters of matching cloth so the sail can be repaired with the same cloth by anyone with a sewing machine. Delamination is a different issue, once a sail has started delaming then its quite hard to fix, usually it would be in isolated areas like around the clew patch or the leech tape which can be fixed but if the whole sails starts going then just forget it and start again. To avoid this problem , try and keep the sail out of the UV as much as possible (boom cover always on ect) and try and avoid fluttering leeches where possible. Generally delamination only happens once the sail is really far gone and by then it would be well past its best anyway, I would think 8-10 years before anything like this happens but again that depends on miles, miles = UVs as well as chaffe, flapping, fluttering, and loading. Some people might cover 20-30,000nm in one year, a few years like that and the sails will be fairly well gone.10,000nm at 150nm a day is 67 full days of direct UV exposure for the whole sail. A slow boat will take longer to do the 10,000nm so that is more damage, a mega yacht might do it in half the time so miles cannot be a direct proportion of a sails life but a major factor. In other words we cant say that cruise lam is good for 40,000nm and Dacron 45,000 as it doesn’t work like that.

 

Now you take the price difference between the Dacron and cruise laminate for the genoa, its $251, spread that out over a 5 year period – its $50 per year more, over 10 years its only $25. To me thats s a no brainer.

 

I hope that has helped you all understand the fundamentals of the different cloths.

 

Now down to the cloth selection for various needs, it’s actually pretty much the biggest part of my job to work out what suits the customer’s needs best and what their expectations are of that particular option they have chosen.

It depends totally on the boat, I know this sounds bad but its true, with out tryign to stereotype boat types and people I will give you a kind of simplified overview of what this means to me.

If it’s a gaff rigged 20 ton 45 footer, Dacron is a no brainer, I would chose a low aspect soft (for durability and handling) Dacron, shape obviously isn’t the biggest issue with these sails.

Now a traditional heavy displacement long keel cruiser, already been around the world once and is going again, I would suss out what they had, how long they had them , how many miles, if they were happy ect, if they had poo dung Dacron and they had lasted 15 years and 50,000nm then I would suggest a premium Dacron, it would be such an upgrade that they would be over the moon, I would offer a laminate choice too in case they wanted to step the game up but due to their expectations I don’t think it would last the distance. but then again if they had Spectra cruise laminate sails before then they would be disapointed with Dacrons shape retention and probably unhappy with the sails. so i would offer them a simmilar product to what they had.

A more modern cruiser, say a beneteau, Bavaria, hanse type boat, fin keel, higher aspect rig, again depending on what their expectations are like and , I would push for a cruise laminate, but also give options for premium dacron. I think these boats would really notice the performance gain going to a laminate and they would be really sensitive to bad draft aft, deep baggy sails.

A full performance cruiser, modern light displacement, composite hull, fin keel, carbon rig, for these types of boat, the cruise laminate would be the lowest option, then a spectra cruise laminate, then a carbon spectra cruise laminate, might also chuck in a 3DL marathon quote.

 

So you can see that there is no one answer for the laminate vs woven question, its all about preference. Squid is right that there are many cruisers that just want to get from A-B as cheaply as possible and thats dacron- still unbeatable $ per mile, but for each one of those there is one that enjoys to look at a nice looking sail and to know that their boat is going as fast as possible.

Personally I would go for laminate any day.

 

Anyway that’s enough from me for now, this has dragged on long enough.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The concept of cruisers always sailing downwind is well and good, but I suspect reality is somewhat different. I've talked to plenty of cruisers who have spent a significant proportion of their time bashing uphill on passages ... or at least tight reaching and many cruisers joke about the wind direction always being from the intended destination.

 

Downhill slides might be more important for the traditional long-keeled, fat-assed older style blue water boats and if that's what you've got and how you're cruising then super efficient and stable sail shapes may not be your highest priority. But more modern designed fin keelers that can and do sail well to windward would probably be handicapping themselves by hanging out a set of sails made from Nana's baggy old knickers.

 

So, from what I've gleaned from this thread so far, cruising laminates make better shaped sails that hold their shapes longer and allow better shape control than dacron. Cruising laminates can be just as tough, as easily repaired and last just as long (if not longer than) dacron sails. Cruising laminate sails are likely to be more expensive than dacron sails due to possibly higher material costs, possibly higher materials wasteage and possibly higher man hours in construction, but we can't really say how much more expensive laminate sails are likely to be. And Knot Me appears to be arguing with markm despite the fact that they agree :eh: :lol:

 

It'd be handy to know if the price difference we're talking about here is likely to be around the 20% or 200% mark. A relatively small price differential would tend to drive me toward the higher tech solutions.

 

In addition, I think Squid makes a good point about many cruisers doing daft things on their boats that can and do harm the boats performance and then get super excited about things that are fundamentally much less important.

 

BooBoo has since added his essay and its really good stuff. That explanation certainly helps plebs like me to understand the whole black art of sail making a bit better.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thank you again Booboo for such a comprehensive answer!

 

We had CL sails on the tri - thought it would give us more speed, but it did not seem to make a big difference. They def looked way cool though :) .

 

The Elliott has a dacron main - still stiff to handle, but seems a bit baggy/full right where we don't want it to be (although a rig tuning has improved this alot!); and mylar/kevlar light and heavy jibs. I think that when/if we have to replace any sail/s we will probably go CL again. The differences in prices Booboo has mentioned above is not great, and if I remember rightly, for the tri the price dif was negligible.

 

My personal feeling is that if you are purchasing new sails, you want them to give best possible performance for as long as possible. I mean, I do like to get where I am going as fast as I can . . . :lol:

Link to post
Share on other sites

The worlds going to the pack. Just too hard starting a shitfight when the main antagonist agrees with you, as sensitive and new age as he may be {cough cough new age my arse - heard softly in the back ground} :lol: :lol:

 

And then Booboo comes in with a post that both is informative and agrees with me also.

 

Bugger this, I'm going to go abuse a fizz boater instead, they are usually so dumb you can tell them anything and they'll believe it...... suckers :lol: :lol:

 

I do like my 'only a couple of K difference' guess. Got one close for a change :thumbup:

 

And as a FYI - Booboos prices seem to be very bloody good. I was just speaking to someone who is about to hand over $9000 for a mainsail on a lightweight 30fter. Maybe he should be chatting to Norths. It will be suggested inside 5 min.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The price diff dacron/lam for Island Time was not much, if, as booboo said, you were planning on a decent dacron anyway. The new headsail I got from him is a Norlam furling no 2 (+ a bit - maybe a 2.5?). It replaces a Doyle cruise lam headsail that had done about 25,000 miles ove the last 9 years. It was stuffed, and had begun to delaminate. However, desipte what has been said about shape, and yes the doyle sail had had a few repairs, it was also a crap shape, and very hooked in the leach.The new Norths sail is a HUGE improvement for upwind, maybe 6-10% faster and 3-4 deg higher. Thats a lot! It also keeps it's shape much better when partially furled. No real diff for dowwind though, so I ordered a new Gennaker!! And yes, my offshore cruise is on a very limited budget, but we are starting off with everything in good order....

Any new sails I order will be lam, it's just the way to go. Less heel, better balance, faster and easier...

Link to post
Share on other sites
We had CL sails on the tri - thought it would give us more speed, but it did not seem to make a big difference.

 

I may be wrong (and probably am) but I would think that the difference between a good condition dacron sail and a CL sail would probably not be that great. The difference would lie a few years down the track when the dacron bags look like Nana's old knickers and the CL sails are still the same shape as they were to start with (kinda). And even then the difference may not be that easy to detect

 

And stop frightening me KM! I'm going to need at least a genoa and probably a genoa, main and gennaker-thingy before we head offshore and I'm already worried that I'm not going to be able to afford this cheap cruising lifestyle. Jeebus man, I'm never going to be able to squeak a $9k main past the Mrs, let alone the Bank Manager.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Everything you do on a boat costs the same as a small second hand car. :D

jib for my neighbours Regardless= price of a Small Second Hand Car

jib for my davidson.SSHC.

new turbo to replace the busted one..SSHC. More recently a new gearbox .. yup.. SSHC

mainsail .. same etc etc.

:lol:

Link to post
Share on other sites
We had CL sails on the tri - thought it would give us more speed, but it did not seem to make a big difference.

 

I may be wrong (and probably am) but I would think that the difference between a good condition dacron sail and a CL sail would probably not be that great. The difference would lie a few years down the track when the dacron bags look like Nana's old knickers and the CL sails are still the same shape as they were to start with (kinda). And even then the difference may not be that easy to detect

.

 

Yes - you are probably right, but the original sails we had on the tri were cut down hobie sails of unknown use. They were old lol. I guess the recut had removed any luff bagging, as they seemed to have a good shape - and fully baterned probably helped. The jib too was cut down (and fully baterned).

 

So the new CL sails did not SEEM to make alot of difference - but they may have made 1/2 to 1 kt diff - which is maybe not so bad. It just didn't FEEL faster - if you know what I mean. And fast does count :lol:

 

Still waiting to exceed 13.2kt. It seems to be the fastest any boat I have been on has gone - with me on it . . . I wonder if that has any bearing on me :lol.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Everything you do on a boat costs the same as a small second hand car. :D

jib for my neighbours Regardless= price of a Small Second Hand Car

jib for my davidson.SSHC.

new turbo to replace the busted one..SSHC. More recently a new gearbox .. yup.. SSHC

mainsail .. same etc etc.

:lol:

 

BOAT = Bring On Another Thousand

Link to post
Share on other sites

So in essence, it all depends upon what type of cruising you want to be doing, time span and miles to travel.

 

I am remininded what Olin Stevens said many years ago.

 

"Cruising should be 90% racing efficiency" :thumbup:

 

A good fast passage made is a relief for all the crew.

 

So is the ability to claw and beat off a lee shore in a blow 5 years later worth bearing in mind :?:

 

Personally I agree with Squid about the 3 bladed fixed props on many cruising boats. The drag is terrific. Try towing a bucket at full sailing speed.

 

Personally I have been very impressed with Kiwiprops and have had really good advice and even FREE service for two different boats.

Biggest tip is to keep them well greased!

 

I would like to see some independant current drag test data on the different sorts of props & setups e.g. Sail drives vs Shafts; folding vs Kiwiprop vs feathering vs variable pitch etc with all the different combinations of 2, 3 and 4 bladed folding props.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Personally I have been very impressed with Kiwiprops
Yes and now if they can just make them bigger than 50Hp :wink:

 

As for drag, folding and feathering make a big difference agaisnt a fixed, even kiwiprop. But saildrive and shaft is a little harder to measure. Being the fact that shaft has many different variables in desing. Like down angle, apendage in the water, shaft diameter, etc etc.

However the biggest single influence on drag is the prop itself and whether the prop is spining or locked. A spinning prop has the greatest "lock" on the water, if that made sense. In otherwords, it is acting like a gyrocopter blade. The affect on drag is then a direct reflection on the effort to sping the shaft. The faster the boat is traveling, usually the hard it is to sping the shaft assembly and the more drag. But then the faster the boat is traveling, usually the more wind and thus it doesn't tend to be noticed. A harder to turn shaft can really slow a boat down in light air.

In anything under 10kts, we can get a significant gain in speed by just idling the motor. But it's not good idling the motor for any long period and who wants the noise anyway. We have a 23" three blade yacht prop. It is the worst of all worlds. It gives little real power to the water like a launch prop does and it still creates to much drag when sailing in light air. I looked into a Bruntons folding and it was going to cost around $8-10K. Too much for my pocket sadly.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I've gone from a 2 blade fixed to 3 blade fixed, so it will be interesting to see the difference once I get it back in the water.

Other things are higher up the list of purchases, so could be a while before I get a new folding prop.

Sails being one of them, just to bring it back on topic. :)

I will be sailing around with grandma's undies for a little bit longer than expected seeing the prices listed by Booboo. :(

 

The yacht I race on got a new main a couple of weeks ago, and it is Mylar one side, Kevlar core, then Dacron other side. Apparently once the mylar started to lose it, the Dacron will hold it together for a bit longer.

The Main we have just retired was 4 seasons old Carbon cored laminate. The carbon fibres were breaking and holes were appearing in the mylar which was slowly being replaced by bits of repair tape every day before racing.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

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


×
×
  • Create New...