Hi all,
We were just trying the 6m battens in their pockets yesterday, when we discovered what looks like quite a serious fault in my shaping of the whole thing. When we lightly tension the sail along the batten, there is about 35 mm of slack in the 300 mm of cloth between the batten pockets in way of the mast. Deep depression.
I can't think that these are going to disappear when we have our trial hoist on the old oak tree down the track. If this is correct, is it going to be enough simply to put a single cut with the hot knife perpendicular to the edge of the sail, and then stitch the resulting overlapping pieces together? I suppose I really have to get all the battens in and do that trial hoist, but lying on the table the sail does not look like it'll set very prettily as it is!
It's not all doom and gloom, because although the summer's work on all of this has been very patchy I have nearly got the mast to the painting stage and the sail otherwise looks fantastic. The partners are finished and the step just needs a little tweak. The Douglas fir batten ends are shaped and require finishing (we copied David Thatcher's very nice batten extensions that he has on Footprints). And I need to go shopping for some bits. We are keen to get a trial sail before the weather in the west of Scotland tuns for the worse.
Any suggestions re the sail would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Pol.