I first got interested in making my own sail after viewing an article online in the Duckworks Magazine. This was about putting camber into a junk sail made from a poly tarp. At the time I had a quantity of light weight rip stop nylon so I set about the task of making a sail. Once I had worked out the method the rest was relatively easy,this sail had about 8/9% camber and was a copy of my original flat sail .I use this sail for one season 6/7 months of mainly weekend sailing, it worked quite well sailing closer to the wind and about 1/2 a knot faster. Its main test was a force 4/5 maybe gusting 6, came through well, problem with rip stop nylon is that it does not take abrasion.
No sailing over the winter, read David Hardings report in the PBO magazine about Slieve McGalliards split rig on Poppy and also pictures of Amiina. Next job I bought a 8x4 metre white poly tarp and set about working out the size and pattens for the panels. Most of the decisions about measurements and shapes were more intuitive than calculated.
I do think that having the jiblets at 33% was a little to much, maybe 28%would be a more realistic balance. Slieves query about the battens, I got the size wrong the OD is 25 mm and wall thickness is 3 mm.
Had the boat out in a force 5 with all the panels up,as I sail single handed it was a bit scary but no bending or problems with the battens.
Have made a modification to the jiblets I cut out the poly tarp ones and have made new ones from my previous rip stop nylon sail also carried the split through to the top panel.
Fitted and sailed last weekend no problems does sail close to the wind but best to back off a little, kept pace with a Medusa 25 and a Leisure 23 on a beam reach, and on a down wind running was noticeable faster.
The idea behind using rip stop nylon was it would act like a spinnaker in light winds ,at 285 grams for a 6 sq metre sail it is very light weight.
See new pictures in the Technical Illustration Forum.