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Step 4New Sail
The old blue tarp sail has gotten pretty tattered and bagged out over the years. It's developed way too much belly, which means it's great in light winds but doesn't go to windward well in higher winds.
We've been seeing 18mph winds in the channel on www.iwindsurf.com every day. So it's time to cut a new flatter, less stretchy dacron sail. Kathleen lays out some cutting and sewing lines for the new sail. Then she "bones" the hem with a chunk of pipe. That pre-creases the hem and is the main difference between good and bad sewing.
The sail is cut like a Marshall Islands sailing canoe. I lived there for a few months once. I spent a lot of time pestering the locals about their sailing canoes. Chief Michael Kabua taught me this traditional style of sail cut which he used on his champion toy canoe.
For this sail I took some liberties with the tradition. Instead of lacing the sail to the spars the cloth is folded over to make mast pockets like a windsurfer sail has. All edges of the sail are 14 feet long to match the windsurfer spars I had. The leech on this sail is the existing hollow leech from the donor sail, rather than bulged. The luff is cut straight along the mast just as in the tradition. The edge rounding is 1.5" along the boom and is "S" shaped just as in the tradition.
Just to be clear: Marshallese canoes have an architecture and sailing style very foreign to this current canoe. But their sail cut is perfectly suited to it.
We've been seeing 18mph winds in the channel on www.iwindsurf.com every day. So it's time to cut a new flatter, less stretchy dacron sail. Kathleen lays out some cutting and sewing lines for the new sail. Then she "bones" the hem with a chunk of pipe. That pre-creases the hem and is the main difference between good and bad sewing.
The sail is cut like a Marshall Islands sailing canoe. I lived there for a few months once. I spent a lot of time pestering the locals about their sailing canoes. Chief Michael Kabua taught me this traditional style of sail cut which he used on his champion toy canoe.
For this sail I took some liberties with the tradition. Instead of lacing the sail to the spars the cloth is folded over to make mast pockets like a windsurfer sail has. All edges of the sail are 14 feet long to match the windsurfer spars I had. The leech on this sail is the existing hollow leech from the donor sail, rather than bulged. The luff is cut straight along the mast just as in the tradition. The edge rounding is 1.5" along the boom and is "S" shaped just as in the tradition.
Just to be clear: Marshallese canoes have an architecture and sailing style very foreign to this current canoe. But their sail cut is perfectly suited to it.
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