Never mind the creases

IT SEEMS TO BE very fashionable these days for cruising yachts to have loose-footed mainsails. That fashion arises from the fact that racing boats invariably have loose-footed mainsails.

Some people say a loose-footed main is easier to trim to the desired belly, and tightness of leech, but I am not one of them. I have sailed on racing boats with mainsails firmly attached to their booms in slotted tracks, and mainsails with zippered folds in the foot to give more belly downwind, and those boats gave nothing away to other boats with loose feet.

The mainsails of all my cruising boats have had their feet attached to the boom, usually with slides running in the internal boom track, for one very good reason: An attached mainsail is easier to control when you’re singlehanding and need to furl the sail in a hurry.

If you’re up on the cabintop dropping the main in any decent kind of breeze, a loose-footed sail falls all over the deck. The slippery folds of Dacron create a treacherous foothold. But if your main is attached to the boom, it’s the work of a moment to grab the leech a little way up from the boom and pull it tight, away from the mast, to form a temporary pocket. You then stuff the mainsail into the pocket, twisting as you go, until you end up with a slim sausage of sailcloth inside a nice tidy, waterproof sheath of Dacron. Slip two or three gaskets around the bundle on top of the boom and Bob’s your uncle. You can be finishing your first beer while the man with the loose-footed mainsail is still sliding around the deck trying to gather and contain his wayward folds.

My naysayers and detractors will point out that a mainsail thus used will be crushed and creased and therefore less efficient next time it’s raised. To which I say “Tough titties!” There is altogether too much racing boat influence in mollycoddling the main. It’s the racing influence that seduces people into buying loose-footed mains in the first place. Let the mainsail crease, for goodness’ sake. It’s a working sail not a work of art. What’s more, the wind and rain will smooth out those creases quite nicely next time you’re out. Your good old cruising boat will never notice the difference.

Today’s Thought

Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken.

— William Hazlitt, Conversations of James Northcote

Tailpiece

“O’Flaherty, what are you doing here? Your brother called and said you were sick and wouldn’t be coming to work today.”

“Ah begorrah, the joke’s on him. He’s not supposed to phone until tomorrow.”

New sails, old materials

THIS IS THE SEASON when sailmakers hope you will bring in your sails for a little tender care. It’s also the season when a lot of us start wondering if we need new sails, and if so, whether we should go the whole hog and order laminated sails made of exotic materials.

In Sven Donaldson’s excellent book Understanding the New Sailing Technology the author points out that the majority of today’s sails are still being made from woven sailcloths that are, at best, only marginally improved over the materials in use during the 1970s.

Although Donaldson’s book was published in 1990, his statement still holds good. The new technology of molded and laminated sails is going strong, of course, but comparatively few sailboats are using sails of Spectra, Kevlar, Mylar and other exotic materials because of their higher cost and reduced life.

Dedicated racing boats are the major customers for high-tech sails because of their greater efficiency. But if you don’t mind dropping behind by a few seconds a mile, cheaper nylon and polyester (Dacron, Terylene) sails will do just fine, accept more knocks, and last longer.

While improvements are being made all the time to the fibers, weave, design, and construction of “ordinary” sails, especially with the help of computers, it’s likely that laminated sails and glued panels will point the way to the future for all sailboats.

But don’t rush things. The future isn’t here yet. Sailors are ultra-conservative, and for very good reasons.

And here’s a final thought to chew on: One-design racing has shown that laminated sails aren’t consistently faster than new sails made from firm-finished Dacron sailcloth.

Today’s Thought

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

— Samuel Butler, Notebooks

Tailpiece

Little Mary woke at 2 a.m., called for a glass of water, and demanded to be told a fairy story.
“Hush, sweetheart,” said her mother, “your father will be home soon and he’ll tell us both one.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Computers know best

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

IN THE BEGINNING there was flax. And flax begat cotton. And cotton begat a whole bunch of exotic chemical compounds derived from oil. We have entered the Plastic Age of sails.

Laminates of Mylar, Kevlar, Spectra, nylon and Dacron are light, air-tight, and stretch-resistant. Sailmakers now talk of “building” sails instead of “making” them, although they still describe themselves as sailmakers rather than sailbuilders. Computers design sails now. They’re even being fashioned on full-size molds of the exact shape required.

But they’re still the mysterious, magic engines we have always known, although not understood. What we do understand is that small differences in shape make large differences in performance.

Lowell North said in a November 1996 interview in Latitude 38 magazine that computers now designs better sails than humans do. And not even the best intuitive sailmakers can see the difference.

Aha, I hear a cry from the back over there. “Who’s Lowell North?” you say.

Ignoramus. He’s the Olympic gold medalist who founded North Sails and built it into the biggest sailmaking firm in the world before selling out in the 1980s.

“None of us could tell which sail was fastest by just looking at it or looking at 3-D pictures of it,” he admitted. “No way — not one of us had a clue. I had figured I knew exactly what a fast sail should look like. But it wasn’t until we came to accept the fact that we didn’t really know what a fast sail should look like that we really began to make progress.”

Today’s Thought
Men are going to have to learns to be managers in a world where the organization will come close to consisting of all chiefs and one Indian. The Indian, of course, is the computer.
— Thomas L. Whisler, Professor of Business, U of Chicago

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb #66
Engine blowers. Two of the most important rules of thumb for engine compartment blowers on gasoline engines:
—They should always be set to blow air out, not in; and
—They should be run for at least five minutes before starting the engine.

Tailpiece
“Every time I sneeze I’m overcome with hot passion.”
“Good grief. What do you take for it?”
“Black pepper.”