Caribbean Compass Yachting Magazine 2015

— Continued from previous page
Also, once the sail is two or three years old the sailmaker can ascertain where the
sail is chafing on shrouds and spreaders. He or she should glue on reinforcement
patches for spreaders and cut narrow strips to cover the seams where they chafe on
shrouds. If all this is done the life of the sail will be increased considerably.
Problem Two: Flogging
Flogging is another great cause of sail damage or destruction. My problem of flogging
mainsail was solved in 1989 when Robbie Doyle gave Iolaire one of his first
“stack packs” with a fully battened mainsail to test. We discovered a few problems
as the stack pack was originally conceived. The lazy jacks were dead-ended at the
masthead with adjustments via tackles at the tack. This made it impossible to obtain
enough slack in the lazy jacks to allow us to set our full-length awning. Also it was
impossible to set the sail unless you were absolutely head to wind. Even then there
was difficulty with the lazy jacks fouling the full-length battens.
After some head scratching we came up with the solution. Install a block just below
the upper spreaders. Then we lead the end of the lazy jack that was dead-ended at
the masthead, through the block below the upper spreader, and down the mast to a
cleat on the mast. In this way, once the main was down the lazy jacks could be eased
and carried forward, allowing us to rig our full-length awning. We would leave them
forward until the main was hoisted, then set them up, We used the lazy jack adjustment
at the tack as the fine tuner, the one up the mast through the block below the
upper spreader as the coarse adjustment.
Once the problem was solved I explained to Robbie how we rerigged the lazy jacks
and his manual was rewritten for the lazy jacks to be installed in the Iolaire method.
(See illustration.)
A fully battened sail installed in a Doyle stack pack or one of the similar units now
on the market will last virtually forever.
One problem with the stack pack was in the final assembly: sewing the cover to
the foot of the sail, the membrane to the cover, and then the membrane to the
sail. This was a three-person job, one pulling, one pushing and one sewing. Also
it was virtually impossible to repair the cover or the lower section of the sail
unless you found a sailmaker who had a deep throat machine and was willing to
put three people to work to do the repairs. Thus I urged that when making future
stack packs the cover be secured to the sail via a zipper, the cover to the membrane
via a zipper, and the membrane to the sail via a zipper. Not only would this
make the stack pack easier to build, but also it would make it easy to remove the
cover and membrane for repair. Built in this fashion if someone wanted to go racing
it was easy to remove the cover, membrane and lazy jacks, and reinstall them
once the racing was finished.
Iolaire’s original stack pack was installed in 1989. After six hard seasons in the
Caribbean and a transatlantic passage, it was replaced with a “Street Pack”: a Doyle
stack pack installed with zippers. The original was replaced not because the sail was
worn out but because the cover and membrane were falling apart. Since it was all
sewn together it was too difficult to repair and was replaced. The new Street Pack
was installed in 1995. The cover and membrane have been removed and repaired
three times but the sail was still going strong when I sold Iolaire, 17 years later.
Now there are many versions of the stack pack available. Before you order one,
make sure the sail, cover, membrane, if it is fitted, are all connected with zippers
rather than being sewn together. The lazy jacks should be rigged as per Iolaire,
coarse adjustment alongside the mast, fine adjustment at the tack.
Fully battened sails are nothing new. The Chinese had them on their junks 2,000
years ago and in the last years of the 19th century and early years of the 20th century
the sailing canoes almost all had fully battened sails. Fritz Fenger, author of
that wonderful little book, Alone in the Caribbean, sailed his 18-foot rudderless cat
ketch canoe, Yakaboo, from Grenada up through the islands to Saba where he had
to quit because of sunstroke. Yakaboo was a cat ketch with stayless masts. The sails
had full-length battens and were almost flat topped. As it has often been said, it is
very difficult to invent anything to do with sailing. If you look back far enough in time
it was done before. The new inventions are usually an old idea that works better
today because of modern materials.
I will not get into the argument as to whether fully battened sails are faster than
battened soft sails, but from the cruising man’s standpoint the fully battened sails
beat the soft sails. When you are reefing the full-length battened sail, it does not flog.
If a squall comes through that the skipper feels will only be a short one, the main
can be eased, completely depowering it, yet it will not flog. It may take some strange
shapes but will be depowered. Once the squall passes it can be re-trimmed.
On Iolaire, a yawl, we left the mizzen up when at anchor so she would lie head to
wind rather that tacking back and forth against the anchor rode. When it was blowing
hard the soft mizzen often set up a rather bothersome chatter. However, with the
fully battened mizzen there was no chatter, just a “clunk” as the battens filled port
or starboard.
Problem Three: UV Degradation
In the tropics, Dacron is subject to rapid UV degradation. (Which firm makes the
most UV-resistant Dacron is not a discussion in which I am willing to become
involved.) The solution is simple: use a ‘stack pack’ or make covers of Sunbrella or
a similar sun-resistant fabric — and use them every single minute that the sail is
not in use. Make sure that
the sail covers for mainsails
and mizzens completely
cover the entire
head and luff of the sail,
preferably wrapping right
around the mast, and that
they reach all the way back
past the clew.
In summation, sails are
damaged or destroyed by
stitching failure, flogging
and UV degradation.
Reread this article and follow
the advice given. If you
are using modern hightech
racing sails, be
resigned to short life
Don Street at the helm of the engineless Iolaire
expectancy of your sails.
But if you stick to plain
ordinary Dacron or similar material, your sails will last for many years.
Next month: Preserving Headsails.
SEPTEMBER 2015 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 23