Modern cruising sail fabrics are available in a huge array of styles, an embarrassment of riches for sailmakers and sailors alike. To choose the sailcloth for any sail, a sailmaker draws on input from the boat owner on how the sail will be used and on his or her own experience. Durability, stretch resistance, ease of handling, and performance vary with each fabric. Selecting the best fabric for each job insures that the sail will last longer, perform better and will be easier for you to handle.

When you look into new sails, it will help you to learn as much as you can about sail construction and sail fabrics. Think about how you use your boat now, and how you plan to use your boat in the future. This information should influence how your new sail will be designed and built. A properly designed and engineered sail can help your boat point better, heel less, sail more comfortably over a wide wind range, and will be easier for you to handle. Working closely with your sailmaker is your best insurance that he or she builds you the best possible sail.

Choosing the right fabric for your sail involves having a basic understanding of cruising sail fabrics. What follows is a quick primer on modern cruising sail fabrics. There are two ways to manufacture sailcloth: Weaving and Laminating. Fabrics from both processes can, when used properly, create beautiful, durable cruising sails.

Wovens are constructed by weaving polyester fibers on a loom. Most Wovens are fill oriented because it is easiest to control the tension in the fill direction which runs the short distance across the loom. On a roll of cloth, the width across the roll is the fill and the length of the fabric on the roll is the warp direction. The fill orientation of wovens makes them most suitable to crosscut sails where the fill threads or lined up with the leech which is the major loak direction in the sail.

The quality of woven fabrics depends on the quality of the yarn and the tightness with which they are woven. Fabrics of the same nominal weight may have a few large yarns loosely woven - called "low cast" or a great many smaller yarns tightly woven - called "high cast". Higher cast is associated with higher quality, but also with high price, as it takes more loom time to weave a fabric tightly. A tight weave offers lower stretch off the thread line and better durability.

Wovens are good choice for cruising sails because they have excellent chafe resistance and a reasonable cost per yard. A crosscut design sail takes less fabric and labor to build than a radial laminate sail. Wovens' drawbacks are that they are generally heavier than laminates for the same strength and harder to handle than laminates due to a firmer hand. Moreover, the crosscut panel arrangement does not perform all that well in sails that experience a large range of off the straight leech loading, especially big roached mainsails and low aspect furling/reefing headsails.

Wovens are differentiated by fiber orientation as well as weight. Some wovens are designed for high aspect sail plans (tall and skinny) other for low aspect (longer foot relative to height). As a rule, it is best to use wovens that have a fiber orientation that meets the load demands of the sailplan. For example, a Sabre 28 main is high aspect, so a fabric that is oriented with more fiber in the fill direction (running up the heavily loaded leech) than in the warp will be ideal. The 135% roller furling genoa for the same boat will be a low aspect sail , it has a long foot relative to the height and should be made from a fabric with more yarn content in the warp direction than the high aspect fabric. The third type of woven is called balanced or all purpose and is usually used in gaff headed sails or economy grade sails.

Laminates are layers of film, scrim and/or taffeta that are glued together under extreme heat and pressure to form a composite sail material. A film is an extruded sheet of isotropic plastic. Film is low stretch in every direction, contributing to material stability, zero porosity, and provides a surface that adheres well to other elements in the laminating process. A scrim is a grid of relatively large, unwoven, straight yarns. Cruising laminate scrims can be made from Polyester, Pentex, Vectran or Spectra. Scrims have little stretch parallel to the yarns but have no off threadline integrity and are usually sandwiched between other layers of scrim in a composite fabric. Taffeta is a layer of woven material (polyester, Pentex or Spectra, depending on the application) that is laminated to the outside of the fabric to provide added durability and chafe resistance.

The ability of a material to resist stretch is called the modulus. Laminates generally have higher modulus than wovens of the same material because the threads are pretensioned and lie straight inside the laminated film. In the woven fabric, the fibers run over and under each other and when loaded try to become straight. This is referred to as crimp. Laminates are also lighter because only the amount of load oriented fibers necessary to handle the predicted loads of the sail are used. Laminate styles differ by the amount of load bearing fibers in the scrim. More fibers = stronger cloth = heavier weight. Laminates are now almost all designed with the lion's share of the scrim fibers aligned in the warp direction.

Laminates sails incorporate a radial design that allows the warp scrim fibers to follow the major loads in the sail. Laminate fabrics generally offer lower stretch, lighter weight and a softer hand than wovens. The softer hand also makes a cruising laminate sail easier to rollerfurl. Laminates are also an excellent choice in large roach sails where radial panels and fiber orientation can be used to support the roach. Laminate material is more expensive than wovens, less chafe resistant and the oriented panel design is more expensive to build.