I think I have a plan for assembling Leeway’s sail.
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I spent some time deliberating over construction technique and after borrowing many ideas from Erik and the rest of the JRA, I hope I’ve come up with something that is reasonably efficient to build and hopefully durable. All panels are made with vertically seamed cloths with the warp of the fabric parallel to the leach and luff. All seam joints are 20mm overlap joints, double stitched with 6mm zig zag. The sails are identical, except with an additional panel in the mainsail. The top panels have 2% camber, the second from top has 4%, and all the remaining panels have 6%. The top panel uses rounding-only for camber, the second from top panel uses rounding and broadseaming. I only used the broadseaming because I was already joining cloths and it helps make the lower edge of this panel exactly match the length of the lens that will come below.
The basic units of Leeway’s sails are the individual hour-glass panels and a 30o shelf foot that gives camber. The plan is to combine the shelf feet of the panel above and the panel below each batten into a single lens. Onto this “small” piece of cloth, sailmaker’s style batten pockets can be stitched.
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For a long distance sailing, it seems the consensus is that adding generous tabling is a good idea to keep the sail from fluttering itself to death, both when up, but also when reefed. If the tabling was added after the sail was assembled, I struggled with how to make the bend around the transition from the panel to the 30
o shelf foot (as you turn this corner any patch will want to change course from the panel edge toward the middle of the panel). Instead, it seemed simpler to put the tabling on before assembly, which also lets you work with smaller pieces while sewing. So, the plan is to fold a single 350mm wide rectangular piece of cloth around the luff and leach with 250mm of cloth on one side and 100mm on the other. This is easy to do on the panels, but the lens would have tiny bits of cloth.
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Instead, it seemed like it would be better to have oval patches that span the lens and shelf foot, thus reinforcing the seam and providing tabling (stitching to match panel tabling not shown on patches). Each oval is folded over the luff or leach and covers both sides of the sail.
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On my paper models the oval patches seem willing to accommodate the deflection as you go down one shelf-foot, across the flat for the batten and then back up the other shelf foot. I plan to try sewing a couple of 1/2 scale panels to see if this will work in reality.
To make room for the tabling, I ended the batten pockets a bit more than 250mm from the edge of the sail. I think at the aft end of the sail I’ll bolt the batten to the sail through a webbing reinforcement, similar to what Paul Fay did on Ti Gitu, but also include a batten insert like David Tyler and Erik Menzel have used, which will both keep the tube from collapsing if the bolt is over-tightened and provide a spot to anchor the sheetlets. At the luff of the sail each batten will get a webbing strap to help keep it in place and a lashing to tension it forward.
I’m not sure I have the gap in the batten pocket in the right place. A short batten parrel seems like a good idea to keep the sail from misbehaving. However, I also like Paul Fay’s idea where each batten has two parrels, one long and one that is like a throat parrel (around the mast with both ends of the parrel attached to the end of the batten). In which case, perhaps it is better with long parrels that could be set up tightly to keep the battens against the mast while the second parrel keeps if from moving forward???
I think I’d like to rope the sail with seatbelt webbing. It’s really attractive as a way to reinforce and add mass to stop fluttering. If I ever end up with a hooked leach from stretching cloth and unstretchy webbing, I suppose I could just take off the webbing and I’d still have a sail with tabling.
It looks like the consensus JRA batten recommendation for a 50m2 sail has settled on 2” by .065 wall (50 x 1.5mm) for most of the battens with the top sheeted batten and the boom being increased to 3mm (.125”) wall. Material is 6061 T6. This is my plan.
I’m less sure of the Yard. Like everyone, I’d like to save as much weight aloft as possible, but a bent or broken yard also seems best avoided. Reading the
recommendations in Erik’s Raven build thread (also a 40’ schooner with shorter yards) it looks like the recommendation was that a 4” x .125” (100 x 3mm) tube would be enough with a span to spread the load. Unfortunately, I don’t have room for a span and was planning to use the method recommended by Paul Thompson of a 3:1 halyard with a block at the midpoint of the yard and a second fixed point located 10% aft on the yard (thus the load is spread slightly with 2/3 at the midpoint and 1/3 slightly aft). Would it be prudent to go up to a 5” x .125” (130 x 3mm) yard? The plan would be to lash the block and the fixed point to the yard without holes in the yard (maybe holes on the side for an eye to keep the lashing from slipping).
Any comments or thoughts are appreciated. Things are still evolving, but I really must get disciplined and start sewing soon.