I've made several sails over 50 sq m, and it seems to me that there is a valid reason to use Roger's hinges at one or two battens in these larger sails, to make the handling easier. They are certainly more work to make, so there has to be a good reason to use them. A large sail is heavy and bulky, and to be able to move it around in two or three separate pieces, both when making it and when rigging it, has appeal.

But in smaller sails, I can't see any good and sufficient reasons to use them. I had no trouble in making my 22 sq m sail, using soft cloth, in my living room. Your proposed sail, Jami, is towards the bottom end of the scale of size, and whatever methods you use to join panels and add the pockets, I can see no reason to go for the 3H method.

Going up to Asmat's size of mainsail, twice as big as mine, I can see that it would be justifiable to put in some extra work to make it in two sections, joined by the 3H method. Going right up to the very large size of mainsail that might be wanted on the 50ft boats discussed recently, I would be tempted to split the sail into as many as four sections.

Jami,

Roger Taylor’s method surely has proven to work, but frankly, I think it will be quite a bit more work to make and rig the sail this way.

I think my “Amateur method B” of assembling the panels is a lot quicker; see Chapter 5 of “The Cambered Panel Junk Rig”, or look at the photos from making my 35sqm sail for my IF, Ingeborg.

My method has two major labour-saving elements:

·         There is no need for passing lots of sail under the arm of the sewing machine.

·         By assembling and finishing the sail as two separate sections before finally assembling it along batten 3, I save a lot of man-handling of canvas.

The main advantage of Rogers method is that you can easily remove a panel and do adjustments to it (on the sail loft) or simply replace it with one of a different shape. Frankly, even though I call myself a rig fiddler, I haven’t felt any need for that.

Anyway, good luck!

Arne

Roger Taylor's horizontally higned hybrid (3H) sail has been discussed here many times before. But is his sail really the only one - hasn't anybody used his example and done the same?

If not, why not? Is it generally accepted, that there are cons that make the construction not as good for an average cruiser as other JR versions?
Or do you think it's not worth the effort of sewing all the hinges?

To me the system seems very appealing, although I'm not quite sure if it is the seemingly straightforward sewing, the (almost) identical tacks of the sail or the fact that I'm ovewhelmingly envious of his arctic voyages.