Intro to Cruising Sails and Cloth

Every once in a while we run across a sailor who is surprised to learn that we make cruising sails. While it’s nice to be known for competitive racing sails, cruising sails have always been more than 70% of our business and probably always will be. In fact, good racing sails and good cruising sails have a great deal in common, with the differences more in emphasis than concept.

A racing sailor looks for the following qualities in sails: high performance, versatility, durability, low cost of ownership, and ease of handling. A cruising sailor would list pretty much all the same qualities, but in a slightly different order: ease of handling, durability, low cost of ownership, versatility, and performance. Let’s look at what it takes to achieve each of these qualities and how to integrate them into the “perfect” cruising sail.

Easy handling has become more and more important as smaller crews take on bigger boats. The things that make a sail easy to handle are light weight, fabric with a soft “hand”, and the appropriate sail-handling hardware. Actually, with enough of the right hardware, light weight and soft hand only come into play when you’re trying to get the sail back into the bag and move it around the boat. With roller furling and reefing for headsails; single line reefing, lazy jacks, full battens and low friction luff slides for mainsails; ATN sleeves for spinnakers; and, if you’re so inclined, powerful electric winches for sheets and halyards, there is very little actual sail “handling” to do. This is even more true as modern designers move away from the tyranny of the overlapping genoa.

Light weight and soft hand are actually making a big comeback in cruising sails as high tech fibers are built into thin, flexible laminates. Extreme high modulus polymers with trade names like Spectra and Vectran have made possible the new breed of mega-sloops with 150’ hoist mainsails.

These days, the durability of a sail is embodied just as much by long term resistance to change in shape and stretch characteristics as it is by physical integrity. Therefore, selecting the right high quality fabric for the sail, designing that fabric into the right panel arrangement, and assembling those panels carefully with the proper adhesives and stitching are crucial to a sail’s long term usefulness.

Abrasion resistance, flex resistance, puncture resistance, UV resistance all figure in the health of a sail. Sailmakers and fabric suppliers are constantly working to improve all these qualities in cruising fabrics. Little engineering features like leechline cleats that hold the leech line, batten pockets that hold their battens and sail slides that stay attached can make the difference between a sail that dies young or one that lives to a ripe old age.

Cost of ownership is a function of more than just the initial price of a sail. It is that price divided by the number of years or miles that the sail serves its owner well. A floor installer once explained to me that it cost the same number of pennies per day to have a linoleum floor or a ceramic tile floor, the only question was the schedule for the payments. Quality of fabric, design and engineering, and the skill and care of the sailmakers are all factors in the “productivity” of a sail.

Versatility means a sail that is useful over the widest possible range of wind speeds. This means strength, stretch resistance, reefability, and good sail controls. Once again, strength and stretch resistance come from man-made fibers. PET (polyethylene terephthalate) fiber , the polyester best known by du Pont’s trade name Dacron, has been used in sails since the late 1950’s - modern only in the broad sense of the word - and is now the bread and butter of cruising sails, in both woven fabrics and laminates. Today, higher modulus fibers - Pentex, Spectra, Vectran, Dynema, etc. - are all appearing in cruising fabrics.

Just as important to a versatile sail is proper alignment of the low stretch fibers with the loads in the sail. That is why the triradial panel arrangement developed and refined in racing sails has become increasingly common in top cruising sails. When properly executed this kind of sail actually improves its shape under load, getting flatter and more draft forward as the leech opens.

Good sail controls which allow you to control sail shape as racers do add greatly to a sails versatility. Particularly useful is the ability to shape the sail’s luff by controlling mast bend and headstay sag - often as simple as a good backstay adjuster. Easily adjustable outhaul and jib lead blocks should also be high on the list as should proper equipment to reef both headsails and mainsail.

Finally, performance is the quality of your sails which helps you get the most from your boat - from weathering Pemmaquid Point without that extra tack to getting to Tahiti two days ahead of schedule. Performance in cruising sails comes down to the ability and determination of your sailmaker to design and engineer your sails into the correct flying shape for your boat. Which may be why none of our cruising customers ever seems to be surprised to discover we make racing sails.

Maine Sailing Partners
www.mesailing.com
1-888-788-SAIL