Howdy y'all

Thought I'd check and give you a quick update. My sail is all done with. Got a couple lacing gromits to put in but other then that... 

Making a second attempt at my lower mast partner. I think I have got a better idea on how to cut out an octagonal shape. This time I will be using a router instead of a jigsaw. 

Today I will be making some shims for the thing.

The wether here in Chicago is looking up. Still not warm enough for epoxy thoug, won't be much longer.

I will be taking a break from building soon as I will be out hiking this year. I got 3,600 miles to cover on foot through the Rocky mountain range in central United States. From the Canadian border in Montana to the Mexican border in New Mexico! 

If the mountains were the sea, high up on the Waves is where I'd be!

After that I'll be dragging the boat down to Florida to finish he up! 

All the best till then 

Hot Dog

Paul, that's one of my personal photo albums. To look at any of my other albums, or to look at the photo albums of any other member, just click on their name where it's an underlined link (in a forum or in the members directory). Here's mine:

David Tyler

Scroll down to the bottom to see my albums.

Jeffrey, have a look at this photo album. Photo 5 gives proportions for a pocket for a 32mm dia batten, which you could scale to another size.

Time to start cutting out some fabric!!!

A couple of questions about batten pockets before I get going.

I'm going to be using the D-shaped pockets. I would assume that I will need to add a bit of extra material into the sail to accommodate the thickness of the batten. My thought is to add material 1/2 of the circumference of the batten, or 1/4 of the circumference to the batten edge of each panel

Then make the pocket "strip of material" the with of the other 1/2 of the batten circumference "+hem and a little bit of slop"

Is that the way to do it? I'm having a hard time finding information on this. 

David, we made the pair of sails for Footprints and Tystie from Hayward's Sunwing polyester cloth, which sadly is no longer available. It had UV protection - few regular sailcloths have this, and are not a low cost option if they do. I wouldn't use regular polyester sailcloth (Dacron and Terylene being brand names for the polyester fibre from which sailcloth is woven, not the cloth itself) for a cruising junk sail, unless UV protection was built into it. I would want a softer cloth that is happy to be left uncovered when not actually sailing.

Jeffrey, Weathermax 80 is a good cloth, but is a bit tricky to sew. Topgun 9 would be a good choice. In your position, I'd be looking at  this and this . I've always had good results making sails from second grade cloth, as the flaws are generally cosmetic, not structural.