With this sail I wanted to address 2 issues. I wanted a smaller sail that was less hair raising than the previous one had been (I got caught in some very scary squalls) and I wanted a less stretchy better performing fabric than the nylon I had used to make my first spritsail
| The sprit sail design proposed by the designer John Harris of CLC worked really well for me so I want to keep to that design for now. I decided to give polytarp a try. I had a large piece left over
from the Skerry boat cover. At least it is white. I once again cleared the
furniture from the workshop AKA the living room, and to my cats
delight started making another sail. The polytarp was crumpled
and this made it harder to measure accurately. I tried to integrate
the seams already present in the tarp so it would not look too odd.
I cut out the grommets though because they are not well set and not
reinforced enough. |
First step remove cat from unfolded tarp. |
Edges being finished and corner reinforcement being placed. 2 cats
assisting. |
Marked the sail using dry erasable markers. Just rub the marks
off when done! Stitched the edges. I put a binding on most of the
edges except for the one that had a double layer in the tarp. That
one I just folded under. Stitched using a triple zig zag. 3 layers
of corner reinforcements. I went over the sail and stitched a
double line of zig zag along the edges and on all the patches. The
sail now has a good solid feel. |
The grommet holes in my first sail were too close together so
on this one I measured a longer interval and melted the holes with
my soldering iron. Its easier than using a punch and this way there
is no unravelling of the holes. Also used the iron to finish the
corners. I stitched over the corners that have been rounded. |
Marking grommet holes and melting them with soldering iron. |
Setting grommets in holes. |
The grommets fit tightly in the holes and there is enough
thickness to seat the grommet solidly. With this last step the sail
is ready to be tried out. |
The sprit sail is smaller than the previous one. The tack of the sail fits much better. I'm concerned
about the creases coming from the boom to the mast. Maybe this is
too tight. I will try it out then adjust. (As it turns out the
creases seem to disappear when sailing.) The new sail is nowhere
near as pretty as my first sail. sigh...
I used similar measurements to the first sail but made the foot shorter and adjusted other dimensions to make a balaced rig. You can see there is about 6 inches of extra boom. |
Carefully laced new sail on Skerry mast. Needs tweaking! Later I did re lace the sail and it fit much better. There is no shaping on this sail and all the lines are straight. |
Out on the water with new sail |
Spring 2009
OK! Finally I tested my new Skerry sprit sail.After tweaking the attachment of the sail onto the boom it looked much better. I evened out the tension and it lost the creases that you see in the above photos. I had a perfect sailing day. The best day ever. The white sail was perfect for the conditions. 12 knot wind with gusts to 18 and small waves. The sail is easy to control, not as powerful as the nylon one and clearly not powerful enough in wind below 6 or so knots. It is also a lousy sail trying to go upwind. It tends to twist quite alot. |
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This sail wasn't pointing very well and I have to figure out how to tighten-loosen the sail while underway from the back where I sit. It is simply too sensitive to weight distribution to comfortably go to the front and adjust the downhaul and snotter. Arwen marine modified his rigging to bring the ropes to the back using pulleys and a couple of cleats. I think I will try this. Meanwhile the new white polytarp is a success.
I have a piece of bright orange heavy duty polytarp and will make a bigger sail next, about 6 inches lower than the standard Chesapeake Light Craft design for the Skerry. I can tilt my mast quite a lot so I can play with the balance that way. This should give me about 3-4 square feet larger sail area. Sail area is not an issue when there is good wind because the Skerry quickly gets to hull speed with the standard sail and its pretty useless to try and push it beyond that, but there is often light wind and a larger sail would be usefull in that case. |
The White Polytarp was good for brisk days but did not work in low wind and was poor at going upwind. Time to make a new sail!
Read about the Orange Polytarp sail.
Such Fun! |
