I have just picked up this thread as part of my catch up now that we are home from our cruise to New Caledonia on Footprints.  Although we only did 2500 miles compared to David Tyler's 10,000 I can at least report on how Footprints sail has held up. Of interest is that just about all of both ocean passages was with the sail to windward and therefore lying against the mast, (westerly winds going north, easterly coming back).

First off the sail performed well on all occasions and generally proved easy to reef and unreef. I had no problems with excessive camber. We never had more than 30 knots of wind so the minimum number of panels I reefed down to was 4 panels. Being able to cant the sail across the mast for reaching and downwind work is a definite plus for this sail and significantly reduced helm loads and made the boat better balanced all round.

Although I carried a spare batten I did not need to use it and both the carbon tube battens and the 3 alloy battens are still in one piece with no indication of bending or breakage despite several energetic crash gybes. I had thought about replacing the alloy tube yard before we went on the trip as it did have a bend in from last year and I had flipped the yard around so it would bend back straight. I never did replace it and it seems to have come through okay.

There are several areas of chafe on the battens pockets in way of the mast and I have had to put a small patch on one of the sail panels where it obviously has gotten caught between the mast and a batten. The other small areas of chafe on the batten pockets I will also patch by gluing on some sail cloth. A lot of the chafe to the sail actually occurred one night when I was motoring in a zone of no wind but still rolly seas. I tried dropping the sail to reduce damage but found that the boat rolled even more, so I put half the sail back up. The flapping of the leech in the lower panels is a bit annoying but I could not find any way to prevent this happening, but thankfully there does not appear to be any damage as yet to the cloth.

So all in all both boat and rig have held up very well to a double ocean crossing and I have only several hours of maintenance work required on the rig. It was interesting to note that Footprints was very much at the budget end of the cruising yachts out there and at 10 metres was one of the smallest. Quite a few people asked me ' what type of boat is that?' as they obviously could not get their heads around the unusual hull shape and the unstayed rig. However little Footprints and her junk rig managed to go all the places the bigger boats went so that is some satisfaction.

David,

since I have used fairly soft canvas for all my sails, I had forgotten that some uses Dacron. I can see the point you make that stiffer canvas needs a different method.

And no, I certainly don’t need long-lived batten pockets for my own use, and I have no need to replace them easily. However, in this 10.000 N.Miles perspective, I thought that the two mentioned advantages with my method B could be useful for an ocean voyager; the quick fixing or replacing of b-pockets, and the well protected panel (joining) seam.

However, I think we are arguing over rather minor details. In the big picture your rig is no doubt good for your use (as my rig is for mine). And I bet you, just like me, congratulate yourself each time you pass yachts with the crew struggling with risky and uncomfortable deck work J .

Cheers to that!

 Arne

David Tyler wrote:

 

Performance, and Longevity, ahead of Looks. Method 'B' may have performance, but it has neither longevity or looks to commend it. It works as the "quick and dirty" way to make a sail, as you found at first, but it's time now to move on to better ways of working.

Stavanger, Saturday

Well, David,

they say that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I admit that I think my sails look good, with or without a few wrinkles here or there. Take a look at Johanna’s sail on the “bad” tack, here and here. The wrinkles at the battens have to do with me not using broadseams to take in the slack. On Johanna I have slackened the sail 10cm along the battens to increase camber. BTW, Johanna’s sail was made by a sailmaker, so the batten pockets are ”conventional”. On later rigs (Edmond Dantes, Frøken Sørensen) I keep the sail a bit tauter along the battens. This mainly does away with the wrinkles, and also makes the vertical curve of the camber flatter  -  more “shelf-fottish”. Here and here are two photos of Edmond Dantes. Maybe I am a bit subjective, but I think this powerful sail looks great, even on the "bad" tack. The batten pockets, made with Amateur Method B, do harly differ from the sailmaker's pockets of Johanna, and  they certainly perform equally well. The batten pockets at the mast are  made of thick PVC and could, of course, be made from even stouter material, if needed.

The first cambered panel sail, which I made for Malena in ’94, was assembled, using Amateur Method A (see JRA NL 30). This method surely was quick and dirty, with its protruding raw edges. Still, even though that sail never saw a sail cover, and was used a lot, it lasted for 17 seasons (see photos from the  Stavanger Rally 2010) and when it finally gave up, the seams, roping and batten pockets were still good.

The Amateur Method B, on the other hand, where batten pockets are sewn on after the sail has been assembled, I now regard as a fully operational method. One big advantage over most methods is that the panel (joining) seam is so well protected, both from chafe and sunshine. In addition, this method lets one rip off a worn batten pocket in seconds, and sew on a new one on in a few minutes.

As for the looks of the modified HM style sail plan that I use: One may like it or not. There is no use in discussing personal taste.

Cheers, Arne

David Tyler wrote:

Guy Bartholomé wrote:

David Tyler wrote:

I made the sail so that the broad-seaming forms a rectangular crossection to each panel. I would like to alter the sail so that the "shelf" at the top and bottom of each panel was at 30degrees to horizontal. Then it is easy to make the calculation - sin30 is 0.5, and the panel would be cut with a curve of half the required depth of camber, and the broad-seam would extend into the sail by the depth of camber, which would be half the depth of camber inside the straight line from luff to leech. Does that make sense? Slieve uses a 45 degree shelf, which is fine, but the 30 degree shelf is easier for a practical, hands-on sailmaker to understand and do, without making mistakes.

If you had to build a new sail, you would make the broadseams like this... ?? 

http://www.junkrigassociation.org/Default.aspx?pageId=1401723&id=12739200&dh=76&cppr=3

Yes, that's the idea, but I would put the depth of camber much further forward, with a slight hollow in the edge of the panel aft, so as to ensure that the whole of the after half of the sail remains flat.

Guy Bartholomé wrote:

David Tyler wrote:

I made the sail so that the broad-seaming forms a rectangular crossection to each panel. I would like to alter the sail so that the "shelf" at the top and bottom of each panel was at 30degrees to horizontal. Then it is easy to make the calculation - sin30 is 0.5, and the panel would be cut with a curve of half the required depth of camber, and the broad-seam would extend into the sail by the depth of camber, which would be half the depth of camber inside the straight line from luff to leech. Does that make sense? Slieve uses a 45 degree shelf, which is fine, but the 30 degree shelf is easier for a practical, hands-on sailmaker to understand and do, without making mistakes.

If you had to build a new sail, you would make the broadseams like this... ?? 

http://www.junkrigassociation.org/Default.aspx?pageId=1401723&id=12739200&dh=76&cppr=3