Beautiful sail making documented for me an inland sailor being away from any coast by 300 miles. When I make myself a sail for my little boat again I will do it exactly the way you made your sail. What I like most is the idea of the individual panels being connected with staggering as I have no sail makers table and the sewing and cutting of the sail is there fore also easier. I sail only since I am 70 and Your description of Your sail is for an old beginner  perfect and easy for me to copy. All 4 photos I have saved on my PC and can scrutinise every detail and I am happy that I learned again about JR.

Asmat Downey wrote:

We've come a long way since Donald Ridler sailed Erik the Red across the Atlantic using sails made of cotton bedsheets and bamboo battens.

Yes, but you still could, if you were impecunious, or needed to jury rig in some remote place.  That is an essential attraction of junk rig, its potential for low tech, low cost, low stress solutions.  Impoverished voyagers are becoming scarcer than hen's teeth, of course, due to the rising costs of the lifestyle, visa fees, harbour dues, lack of casual work available, etc.  I miss those adventurous, colourful sailors with holes in their pants (and often their sails).

And voila Duckie has new plumage just in time for summer. :-)

Well done Paul.

It's brilliant how each new project completed is a further improvement on those that preceded it.

I'm jumping the gun slightly as sea trials are still a week or two off. However I thought there may be interest in LCB's new sails.

They are a little different in that they are slightly fanned, the shape being one I have developed via a few dinghy sails (see pic of Freebie at the Tall Ships), all panels have 45 degree shelves (not enough room for lower angles) and the sails are created from separate panels, joined by the batten connecting the panels via staggered pockets. These sails are my forth attempt at separate panels and  much thought and hard won experience is behind what I've done. Hopefully I've finally got it right!

Leach and luff are built up in my usual manner. Some think I over do them but I do not think so. I pay close attention to the details... it makes a big difference to the life of the sail. I use materials that have an expected life span of 10 or more years and I build my sails accordingly. The sails that I had on LC never required any attention of any sort over the 6 years that I had them before I sold her. The new owner has had an equally trouble free run and it's going on 9 years since I made them. And the sails sit uncovered in the New Zealand sun.

Photo's show the foresail installed in windless conditions. You can see that the "excess cloth/bagginess" is very much reduced as compared to sails made with the normal shelf foot method.

Last two photos show the batten end details...   For a normal sail, I just put a bolt through the leach and the batten and that is all that is required as the leach carries the load and the bolt holds the sail so that it can be tensioned along the batten. Here the load in the leach and the means of holding the sail so that it can be tensioned along the batten are two separate things.

The white webbing you see is Dyneema webbing and it passes the load to to the lower panel via a Dyneema lashing that passes through the batten. Trying to use this to hold the sail so as to tension it a long the batten would create creases and distort the webbing. So there is a pin that goes through the batten to provide an anchor against which the sail can be tensioned along the batten. The "pin" is a stud with a barrel nut on each end and the webbing loop just gets over the head of the barrel nut. Everything is very smooth and unlikely to cause chafe.

The luff end is done differently because the sail has to be able to move when you tension it and because there is no danger of the lashings slipping off the end of the batten, the luff loading can be transferred by a lashing that goes around the batten rather than through it.

Anyway, hope it's of interest to the members. I'm currently finalising the installation of the main and installing deck hardware.