The weather has been getting colder and colder and I am getting worried that the plan to take the boat to Gosport on Feb11th is not going to be possible. But today was a good day. The sun shone and although it was –50C there was no wind and Seth at SolentSpars called to say that the sails were back and ready to hank on.
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| Nice clean mainsail | ..and genoa |
I had the genoa shortened because on the delivery trip we had a lot of trouble reefing and furling it back in. The problem was that it was too long and so to stop it snagging at the head of the sail we had it re-cut at Arun Sails. We also had tell tails fitted and all the stitching checked.
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| Seth & Luke surveying the job – everything you touch is freezing! | Feed the sail through the mast and into this sail entry slot |
The main also had tell tails added – although Seth tells me that they will probably get torn off by the slot in the mast after a few furl/unfurl operations. Seth, Luke and I spent an hour and a half in the freezing cold slowly feeding the main sail into the slot in the mast and gingerly hauling it up, and then replacing the extremely long vertical battens. Seth was very patient and showed me how to carryout this operation – just in case I am faced with some sort of emergency when I am far from any professional help.
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| Inserting the vertical battens | Carefully furling the main..so it will launch nicely next time! |
Both sails were cleaned by OceanMarine and the main in particular looked like new – very unusual – it just shows that it has hardly been used by the previous owner. Although Richard at OceanMarine has been cleaning and occasionally valeting my boat for years I think he has excelled himself this time.
The mainsail is from MaxiRoach It is probably the best sail you can get for in mast furling. MaxiRoach say that their design gives 30% more sail area than any other furling main sail. So I am happy that while it wasn’t my first preference which would have been a traditional fully battened main – it is “as good as it gets” for this type of main sail.
There are two very good articles on mainsails and the impacts of furling / non-furling and batten design here:
S.V. Enterprise 