Revitalize Sailing: Upgrade Your Sails for New Adventures

If sails are the engines of the sailboat, my engines were sputtering. After 13 years of use, including crossings of the Atlantic and Caribbean, my original Dacron factory sails had seen their day. Restitching and replacing the UV covers had helped, but the sun had eventually gotten to the cloth, and the wind had made them sag. Our in-mast furling mainsail presented  particular problems. Bagged out in the wrong places, it bunched up when furling. 

I tried all the tricks, like varying the boom height and the pressure on the outhaul while furling, but unless I furled it with some wind in the sail, it jammed in the mast and became so difficult to unfurl that I swore like a bosun.

From my berth in La Conner, Washington, I sailed out Deception Pass, stopped at Bowman Bay to watch a spectacular sunset and even better sunrise, and then cruised down to Admiralty Inlet to see the crew at Port Townsend Sails. Globe-spanning sail trainer John Neal claims he’s gotten as much as 100,000 miles from a single mainsail that Port Townsend Sails built for him, and it’s fair to say that these women know their work. They pointed out some dry and brittle areas of sun damage on my sails. They patched them up as best they could for the season, but they gently recommended replacing them before any offshore passages. 

I began to shop around for new sails. To say that the art of sail construction has changed over the years is an understatement. I learned that the cheapest sails are predictably built in the Far East, with consulting and sales done by American dealers such as Precision Sails. They tended to steer customers toward Dacron as a material, for its robust strength and lower cost. They do build sails with low-stretch composite cloths, but at twice the price, they sell less of them. I looked at some of the sails they’d made, and they seemed strong and perfectly serviceable—a go-to solution for budget cruisers.

The bigger lofts—such as North, Doyle and Quantum—have their own manufacturing facilities to create composite, higher-end sails for racing and high-performance cruising. Sails are now designed on a computer, like most things, and the days of laying out ­everything on a table are ­pretty much a thing of the past. Composite sails are made on huge purpose-built tables, where load-bearing fibers are laid out along the load paths of the sail, radiating out from the corners.

Depending on the purpose of the sail, the composition will be different. For example, racing sails, where rigidity and light weight are key, will be made largely with carbon fiber, whereas cruising sails might have a higher component of high-strength durable fibers such as Technora, which is similar to Kevlar. So a sail could be composed of an infinite variety of materials, with a higher density of those materials for bigger loads, less stretch and longer life. A UV- and abrasion-­resistant scrim is usually added to protect the surface, and the sail is laminated under high heat and pressure. 

With such a huge variety of materials and unlimited options for combining them, I found myself in an information overload. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from a guy named David Armitage, who was interested in buying a sistership to my boat, Kāholo, a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 509. He wanted to know how the boat had held up to the open ocean. Having sailed Kāholo across from Portugal to Panama, as well as offshore in the Pacific Northwest, I was able to fill him in on a few common issues, although the boat has proved itself quite reliable. 

As luck would have it, he also happened to be a sail designer at Doyle Sails. A New Zealander who came to the United States with the successful Kiwi bid for the America’s Cup in San Diego, Armitage is still a keen racer. Like many Kiwis, he also happens to be a passionate cruising ­sailor. He lives aboard his fairly tricked-out Beneteau 473. And he had already done some preliminary sail designs for the Jeanneau 509.  

We talked about the challenges and how to overcome them. 

In-mast furling mains like mine present real challenges. They refuse to furl and set once the sail stretches out, and they have a less-than-optimal aerodynamic shape with a negative roach and cupped leeches. Unsurprisingly, many cruisers say they’d never go offshore with one. 

As for myself, after numerous ocean crossings as a delivery captain using every sort of furling system, I’ve actually come to appreciate the furling main. Sail shape might not be ideal, but at 2 a.m., when I am the only one on deck and I suddenly need to reduce sail, I like the safety and convenience of a main that I can reef alone, easily and quickly, to the exact area I want, from the safety of the cockpit, even off the wind. Shaking out the reef is even easier—when it works.

Armitage suggested a laminate specifically designed for offshore cruising, using high-strength Technora threads with some carbon to help reduce stretch. Vertical battens would support the leech, giving the sail better shape. Although early efforts to add battens caused jamming in narrow mast openings, Armitage explained that low-profile batten pockets can now be laminated into the construction of a low-stretch and less-bulky sail material. With less friction, the sails roll more easily into narrow mast openings. The battens also allow the leech to twist off for better sail shape, and support a slightly positive rather than a negative roach along the trailing edge of the sail. 

Doyle is not alone in this. Other ­major sailmakers, like North, which produces the vast majority of sails worldwide, are now adding battens to furling mains. Technology has improved and, like the furling jib, furling mains are now common, with many quality boatbuilders even supplying them as standard equipment. 

Armitage also recommended vertical battens for a new 105 percent furling jib. He sent over some computer-generated sail designs, showing the shape of the sails from several angles and the load paths along which fibers would be laid out. I ­decided to move forward with a new main and jib.  

His designs then went to their manufacturing facility in New Zealand, where the sails were laminated. Finally, they were sent to their loft in Rhode Island, where the panels were joined and the detail work was done on areas such as the head, tack and clew.  

Armitage seemed to have taken a personal interest in my project. Despite a busy racing schedule, he flew out from Rhode Island to Washington to fit my sails. I quickly saw that I’d added a real “sailor’s sailor” to my crew. 

He grew up outside Auckland, ­sailing Optimists as a kid up an estuary where they could sail only at high tide. Eventually, after the Kiwis won the America’s Cup in San Diego, he stayed in the United States, designing sails—that is, when he isn’t off racing competitive Grand Prix series aboard full-on racing yachts like TP52s. 

I was curious about another of his roles: building sails and trimming aboard mega-­yachts, where service-oriented Doyle has a substantial market share. As a trimmer, Armitage says, it is extremely stressful sailing, with massive carbon rigs and 2-inch-thick jib sheets loaded to tons of pressure. Walking around the deck with a remote control around his neck like a crane operator, he is constantly aware of what could happen if one of those sheets were to get loose during a tack and hit someone.  

My sails looked slick when hoisted, but because of the higher tack point on an aftermarket Harken jib furler I’d added, we found that the sheeting angle wasn’t quite right. This was, of course, no challenge for Armitage—just a simple adjustment compared with maintaining sail inventories for major racing campaigns. He had the sail recut and right back up in the air.  

We took Kāholo out for trials in breezy conditions in Puget Sound. Watching a gust roil the water to windward, my first thought was to depower, and ­maybe even reef the main. After years of offshore sailing on the boat, I’ve become familiar with how it handles. But despite a slightly increased sail area, the boat stayed on its feet, sailing through with less heel than I’d anticipated. 

I could feel a big change in Kāholo. The boat pointed higher and sailed faster, given the conditions, than it ever had. At the end of the day, both sails furled away, the main sliding into the mast with some ­resistance—but no swearing.  

If sails are indeed the engines of a sailboat, I’d just repowered with some surprisingly smooth and efficient motors. 

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