I suspect it's nylon.  But Odyssey is pretty stretchy, too, and of its issues, that isn't one of them.  Maybe you can get a sample of that and compare them?

Thank you David.

Was in a hurry & didn't notice.

Chris

Yes - the album looks fine. The address you pasted into the post was accurate, and pasting it into a browser took me to your photo album.

To be really clever, you could have made the link live by selecting the text, clicking on the 'chain link' icon and pasting the address into the box. I have done this now - you will see that the text has turned blue and is underlined, meaning it is an active hyperlink, and you can click on it to go directly to your album.

The photos look great, by the way - I shall study them in more detail later when I have more time!

Chris

Jami,

one of the big surprises that the first JR gave me, back in 1990, was how light the loads seemed to be in the sail. This first sail which I received from England (tan, flat polyester, 32sqm), had the four corners strengthened as if it were a gaff sail – several layers of strengthening patches and then the job crowned with huge hydraulic-pressed grommets.

“Funny that”, I thought. After a while, I tied the clew of the sail to the end of the boom with one single string of waxed twine. That held perfectly well all summer, making a ridiculous contrast to the over-built sail. Later, when I made the first baggy sail in 1994, I was quite confident that the load in the sail was only a little fraction of that in a gaff- or lug-sail of the same size  -  that is, as long as a stout boltrope was there to take the vertical loads. From a stress point of view, a seven-panel junksail is not one big sail, but seven small ones.

In my eyes, the biggest killers, apart from UV-degradation on low latitudes, are chafe (rubbing against the mast or lazyjacks) and flogging. Under way, the only place I have experienced flogging in a cambered panel sail, is in the leech of the lowest panel. There are tricks to remedy that, one being to make the lowest sheetlet as long as possible, another is to use bungees (see low on p. 3 here and then for details here). In addition, unless one secures the ends of the furled sail bundle, it may fly about in the wind there, and slowly destruct itself.

For my coastal sailing, the only anti-chafe measure I take on the sail, is to use thick PVC canvas for batten pockets, at the mast. If I had serious offshore sailing in mind, I may pad the battens first at the mast and then make the batten pockets wide enough to cover that padding.

Arne

PS: A 200g/sqm sailcloth will work well in a breeze on your boat, and it will last forever. However, my experience with 224g/sqm cloth on the 20sqm sail of my Frøken Sørensen tells me that to make these small panels inflate properly in really light winds, one is better off with 100g/sqm.

 

Edward Hooper wrote:

Hi there, I have some lovely photos from David Harding of Amiina's new sail. 

Just have to work out how to put them on the website.   They will show the tell tales in action.

I, for one, would love to see them, Edward.

Take a look at the first section of my natty How-To on uploading photos.

If you use it, please let me know how it was for you, here.

Chris