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Hello all. Sea Thrift still has the old roller reefing main sail. I am intending to convert to slab.Please Does anyone have advice for me? Number of reefs and measurements? Many thanks
Pat
Sea Thift of RameHi Pat,
We got a new set of sails just over a year ago. All the advice we got from the sail makers we talked to was unanimous in thinking the boom roller furling was a bad idea. Too finicky, I guess.
Suggest you talk to a few sail makers and have them measure your boat. We went with North Sails and it was a disaster so I can’t recommend them at all. I hear that they have a set of standard patterns and they pick the one that closest matches your measurements. If this is true, they obviously picked the wrong one for us. The luff is several inches too long, requiring that we drop the boom that much from its nominal position. So it now is very close to the coach roof. They also gave it far too much roach, so that the battens would hang up on the backstay. They recut the roach but did nothing about the luff. They also screwed up the genoa. All in all a very bad experience – anyone can make a mistake, but the way they handled it was bad. Go with someone who cares about their reputation!
We also got advice about reef points: we went with two points, with the second reef point being quite deep. If we get into conditions where a third reef point might be wanted, we’ll drop it all together and fly jib and jigger (mizzen).
We went with two full and two partial battens, and that seems to work well for us. People argue that the wear is worse because of the battens, especially chafe where the battens hit the shrouds, but we will just keep a watch on that.
The main was made of Dacron (NorDac), standard cut. Also, all the sail makers advised having it cut loose footed, the idea being you can get a better shape that way. However, that does mean your outhaul has to be working well, and IMHO the original outhaul is a bit weak. Search on the forums here for another thread about the outhaul, and you can also see what we did on Rainshadow if you go to http://www.svrainshadow.com. I doubled the purchase from 3 to 6:1 by adding another block inside the boom. Have not tested this yet (she is mothballed for the winter).
We are now talking with another sail maker about a light air asymmetrical sail that can point to 40 degrees.
Van
Hello Van
Thank you for your advice, all noted I am interested in the type of asymetric sail you mention, please let me know how you get on.The specific asymmetrical sail we are going to get is made by Yager Sails, over here in Easter Washington. Here are some photos that show the sail pointing: http://yagersails.com/spinnaker.html. Yager sails is a small loft, but he’s come up with a rather nice design. The sail doesn’t have a luff rope like eg the Doyle UPS, and yet it can still point well. Won’t be until April or May that we can test it as we are away.
Hi Pat,
Like you I had a roller furling arrangement on Ronar M when I bought her. I had the existing mainsail altered – two reef points put in. I bought a slab reefing kit made by Barton Marine – lengths of track each with a slider (with spring loaded plunger type stops and a pulley block). I fixed one to each side of the rear end of the boom and lead the reef pennant forward along the boom (via a few s/s loops) to two kleats, one each side of the boom. Works very well. Like Van I would drop the main altogether if I needed a third reef. This really depowers in a blow and my storm jib has the same area as the mizzen so things are nicely balanced. Cheers, Trevor
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