Arne Kverneland wrote:

                                                              Stavanger, Saturday

One important detail when I design my sails is to leave enough clearance under the boom to let me use quite slack, standing topping lifts. To avoid a drooping sail bundle I therefore start with a sail with the lower (parallel) battens having a healthy rise of around 10°. When the first panels are reefed, this lets the clew end of the lowest flying batten have about 30cm clearance over the bundle, ensuring a taut leech on all panels. When I am down on 3 panels or less (the fan section) I am free to adjust the tilting of the remaining sail within wide limits. I’ve found this setup to be super-easy in use.

Cheers, Arne

Arne, or Brian, none of the links in the above message work for me.  They all go to Resource not Found message boxes.  Thanks.

Barry & Meps / Stellrecht & Schulte wrote:I'm getting close to a test sail. Since the last pictures I've discovered that I didn't make my mizzen sheet the way I intended to, so that might have contributed to my twist. I'll see how things look under sail.

I did notice one odd thing about how my sails reef/stow:

The angle of the bundle in my topping lifts doesn't match the angle of the boom/battens when the sail is up. I believe I need to tighten the topping lifts a bit anyhow, and that might fix it. I've uploaded a picture of the main with one panel mostly reefed

I'm also wondering how important it would be to fix this anyhow.

Not important. If you sail with a fanned sail, it's like this as soon as you take the first reef, and gets more pronounced the more you reef. It doesn't seem to matter. Set the topping lifts and the mast lift so that they both go a little bit slack when the sail is fully hoisted, and that's it. 

I'm getting close to a test sail. Since the last pictures I've discovered that I didn't make my mizzen sheet the way I intended to, so that might have contributed to my twist. I'll see how things look under sail.

I did notice one odd thing about how my sails reef/stow:

The angle of the bundle in my topping lifts doesn't match the angle of the boom/battens when the sail is up. I believe I need to tighten the topping lifts a bit anyhow, and that might fix it. I've uploaded a picture of the main with one panel mostly reefed

I'm also wondering how important it would be to fix this anyhow.

David Tyler wrote: Wow, Barry, is that just an everyday red, or a dayglo safety red? I'll certainly be able to see you coming!

I wish it was always that kind of dayglo amazing red! That pic was taken as the sun was getting low, and it was hit by the sun in a way that looks incredible.

It is the same fabric (Red Odyssey III) as the red panel in the mizzen. Looking at all my pix of the sails I see that it looks pretty incredible when the sun is behind it. And good when it is lit directly.

But I did figure that the combination of red and white sails would have good visibility for at least part of it in just about any light conditions!

Barry

And there is another one...far enough along to look interesting, at least!

Flutterby's main sail will be a split sail very close to Slieve's Poppy. My top two panels are white and red like my mizzen, and the rest will be white except for some red webbing boltropes.

I ran out of daylight to do anything with the lower 5 panels, but I did get the topsail bent onto the yard and saw how it looked when I hoisted it up!
picture of main "topsail" hoisted

Tomorrow I should get the rest of it up, and I'm starting to see the likelihood of a test sail next week!