Main sail KISS design

[lastgreatgeneration]

So some theoretical main sail design I have been thinking about for a cruising sail. A simple sail without battens and 3 reef points.

Reef point placement? Percentage?
165/205 square feet.
Weight cloth?
Any other considerations?

[Frank]

CJ will give great advice on your sails....

[CharlieJ]

Mainsail on Tehani was a kit from SailRite and sewed by a sailmaker friend of mine. Spent a good while on the phone with Jeff at Sailrite designing what I wanted.

Battenless, 3 rows of reef points (1st, ,2nd,  and OMG) with a slight hollow to the leech, and is jib headed- no headboard.

6.5 Oz Contender Super Cruise sailcloth. I keep the first two reef points rove, with nettles installed and have lines for the third. So far have not needed to run them.

Separate subject, but my working jib is the same cloth, and has a single row of reef points, also designed by SailRite.

Both sails  designed up front for long term cruising use. I have been completely pleased.

[CharlieJ]

Forgot this-

Working jib is 115 SQ feet, reefs to 57

Main is 136, and first reef is at 20%, second another 20, third WAY down.

Hope this helps

Not the greatest pic- we had zero wind. But you can see the reef points in both main and jib

[CharlieJ]

JUST occurred to me- the 35 foot Cross Tri I lived aboard and cruised for over 3 years also had battenless sails . I love them. Means you don't have to head to windward to hoist or lower necessarily. Easier maybe, but not required

Pic is the tri sailing in the open Atlantic

[ralay]

We have the same mainsail features as CJ.  We just bought a new main, which will be the same except that it'll be loose footed, rather than shelf footed. 

The last sail was restitched once but ultimately the cloth failed along the leech, very probably due to UV exposure when left flaked but uncovered while cruising. 

I had to argue with a lot of sail makers about battens.  All of them are on the full batten bandwagon these days.

We did switch to loose footed, which was standard for everyone but Mack Sails.  There seems to be consensus that the draft of loose footed sails are much more effectively adjusted and that shelf foot sails are a holdover from some racing conventions.

I also considered doing away with our third reef.  Several sail makers, including one who worked for Westsail, emphasized that they are a waste of money for the vast majority of sailors who will never see conditions in which a third reef would be used and would be better served by two deep reefs.  Like CJ, we'ved never used our third reef and don't have any permanent hardware for it.  In the end, I got a third reef mostly to satisfy the expectations of potential future buyers of the boat.  I think most people who buy Westsails are going for a bulletproof aesthetic.

If i had a different boat or planned to keep this one forever, I probably wouldn't have bothered. 

I have a spreadsheet I made while sail shopping that has the cloth weight, thread weight, stitching, price, etc in my quotes.  The exact values wouldn't apply to a smaller boat, but the relative comparisons might be useful.

[ralay]

As for sailrite kits, for me, it just wasn't worth it.  A kit was just over $1000, whereas quotesfor finished sails started as low as $1300. 

Even the cheapest Asian sails come with 3 or 5 step zigzag stitching, which will have 2-3 times the number of stitches as a regular zigzag machine like my Sailrite LZ1.  They'll also be made by people with long arm machines, maybe in wells, and giant gymnasiums who can feed material much more evenly than I can.  They'll also have hydraulic presses and other specialty equipment.  I also wasn't real impressed with the only other kit I ordered from Sailrite (sail covers).  They were fast and easy but weren't designed to be strong enough.  The webbing loops that were supposed to lift the jib bags were really tiny and ripped right out of the fabric.  I redesigned them to be much better.  That combined with the sheer amount of time I'd have to put in made me chose a different route.  I do really love sailrite as a supplier and I LOVE my sewing machine for canvaswork and they have great customer service.  I do know people besides CJ who have also been happy with their sail kits.  I think I'd like to make a dinghy sail from a sailrite kit, but not a mainsail.  YMMV.

[lastgreatgeneration]

Excellent all the great info without all the confusing science and arguing. I'm glad I asked here. All the sail makers are funny, they all push battens and they say "you don't need 3 battens". As for the sail rite kits, I think I would rather have one built for not much more money. I have heard anecdotally that the first reef should be 30% but maybe it's different in larger boats. 20/20 sounds better. If it's too much, ease the sheet!