New Main

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson with the headsail, but no. Spring of 2015, I decided to try my hand with a mainsail. This I did in my mom's basement, which is decently big and completely uncluttered. I brought over a few tables and set them up in a row. The main, being only 10' long at the foot, and with the help of my most understanding wife, made sewing the horizontal panels easy enough. December 2014 003 Here I'm sewing a series of reef patches. It's whole lot easier when you have a second set of hands. December 2014 001 The long edges called out for doing this on the floor. Savannagh's help, pulling and pushing as required, made this a less than terrible job. Let's be clear, it wasn;'t easy and surely wasn't fun, it simply wasn't terrible. But it WAS a good chance to spend a whole lot of time with my mom, who could surely use the company as my dad had passed away just a few weeks earlier. It's a shame he couldn't have been there to watch; he;d have enjoyed it. December 2014 008
December 2014 007 This is mom's foot. Turns out that once on the floor, it was a three person job; Savannagh pushing and pulling, Alan guiding it through the machine and mom operating the pedal. We're getting close now, applying the folded edging tape to the leach. And the machine sewing done, and ready to be brought home. Now the hand sewing begins, and that takes about another 20 hours. But in the end, a beautiful new mainsail. Sadly, what looks great on the dock doesn't necessarily translate to the water. A couple of problems showed up in actual use. The first I'm fixing here; the tape used at the leech edge to keep the sail material from unravelling did itself unravel. So I'm adding some adhesive backed sail tape to the entire leech edge.
The other problem was with the upper batten. In use, the sail would often "crease" or "bend" right at the luff end of the batten. This not only gave a terrible shape at a critical point, it was also a rip waiting to happen. Here I begin the process of adding full battens. Here's the completed upper batten pocket. I actually modified both the upper battens. Completed batten end protector. Careful study will show that the bolts holding this together are JUST the right length. This is not an accident. Here's how I got them just the right length. Three washers, two on the bottom side, one on the cutting side, plus the thickness of the thread forming die was what I needed. (The bottom washer does double-duty by protecting the die.) Some touchup on the sander to smooth the edges; done.