Just a quick update to say my sail is finally fully grometted and ready for battens. It was a fun easy process and the result looks very pretty. In terms of spacing I tried to stay in keeping with the reddish Motto and used 1/9 of the boom as the maximum spacing. Up the luff they’re at 1/18 so the middle will be able to grip the external rope and up the leach between batten three and four I divided the space into three which ended up making the spacing a little closer. After I’d done them all my arms definitely ached! All round the edge there’s plenty of reinforcements for the grommets  and on centre seams the “let’s try and destroy it” test failed and the seams held extremely solid.

All the best,

Zachary.

PS: managed to rope in my brother to help hammer a few in. 

Hello everyone!

It has been a lovely weekend for working on my sail. My sister and I have been hard at work coaxing our trusty singer sewing machine into handling the material. The feed dogs were overwhelmed by the sheer weight and slipperiness of the fabric so we ended up having to feed it through with one person on each side of the machine. It’s not the neatest sewing we’ve ever done but it is definitely strong and sturdy and passed the “let’s bully this piece of fabric until the seam fails test”.

The shape is done, roped and pretty. We managed to pattern match the stripes rather well apart from the hems obviously. I had been hoping the grommets would be in too, alas it was getting too late to make that kind of a noise. It’ll happen next week. All in all still having a ball even though I’m not as quick as I’d like to be.

The main reason for the setback was my amazing grasp of basic geometry. The yard is 70 degrees from horizontal so in my wisdom I drew it at 30 degrees from vertical because that is the same right?? Then never looked at my drawing again until transferring the shape across onto the sail. At which point I noticed the blunder and the sail was too small! Luckily, the scraps could be cajoled into place and it’s all ok now.

Photos are attached showing the process of how we put it together! It was all very neat until it got to roping and hemming… I got to try my grommet tool and I love it. It gives a really awesome result. I hope to send pictures soon (it’s only the one grommet so I didn’t want to attach a picture and it turn out the good one was a fluke. Furthermore, I forgot to take a picture of the hemmed sail… that should arrive at some point.

Hope everyone is well,

Zachary.

Shirley has a nice piece about making her present sail on her blog, which you might well find interesting.  Since then, she replaced the battens with new alloy ones she bought in NZ, which have been a great success.

It's probably wise to lace on bamboo battens rather than using pockets, because they are so knobbly and rarely dead straight.  Be careful about using cable ties: you need to source some that are UV resistant (they usually have a stainless steel lock, too): the sun quickly attacks the ones you buy at your local hardware store.  Kurt Ulmer talks about using them on mehitabel, but I'm afraid I can't give you chapter and verse on this.  It would be about 8 - 10 years ago, if my memory serves.

Thank you for your replies guys!!

Today I attached the battens again on my model and I much prefer that system. I think using tizzies to attach the sail to the battens will be a great place to start. So much so I’ve ordered stainless steel grommets for the task!

Also, thanks for sharing the link! I had read it but I had completely forgotten the pictures showing how the yard was attached. It gives me lots of ideas. Thanks.

I like how clearly your model shows the camber. I’ve attached pictures of playing with my model to show the twist induced camber, and especially on the pictures it’s hard to see because the model is rather dinky.

I think the next step is to actually attach my hammocks together and rope around the edge of the hem. Thanks for the tip about maintaining momentum James. I’ve definitely noticed that continuing while everything is still fresh on my mind is making every little succes and setback far more enjoyable!

The only regret is I wish the fabric for my real sail was as cool as on the model haha. But seeing those stripes just spoke to my inner Viking so it had to be stripes!

All the best,

Zachary

Hi Zachary - awesome news!

It was lovely to meet you and your tribe at Roscoff, and very interesting to talk over your plans.  I'm glad you've decided to take the plunge!  The only advice I'll give is to keep the momentum up - get the boat sailing quickly, even if not perfectly.  It's such a lovely small boat that even if you need to totally redo something, it won't be too big of a job.

I hope that your full sized sail will also be in a delightful floral pattern!

Yes, do please keep us all in the loop.  There's loads of good advice available here, and I can guarantee that there will be a following of others, just behind you, looking for inspiration for their own builds.

Good luck with the conversion!