Hi George,
\nAgree completely on all points in your recent essay on purchasing new sails sooner rather than later and am glad you wrote about it. I am no racer, but I have a fine sailing boat and I like to sail and sail well. And sailing well is a pleasure that too many cruising sailors put on the back burner and do not put much effort towards. Mostly I hear \u201cI am not racing\u201d or \u201cit is too much bother\u201d when it comes to keeping their boat moving efficiently. This is a shame.
\nAnd, I would argue, that the expense difference is not all that great in the long run if you care even a little bit about sail shape. Dacron sails just lose their shape sooner even if the integrity of the sail material\/stitching etc. remains strong and leads to many a cruising sailor holding onto sails beyond their useful sailing life.<\/p>\n
I went with HydraNet Radial and after six seasons of many miles and a high latitude crossing of the Atlantic, their shape remains pretty close to original design shape. I believe I will never go back to Dacron.
\nI will say that, in my experience, too many lofts (and their sails-people) are dominated by racing sailors (mostly young) who have little or no knowledge of cruising and push laminate sails. I am out of that loop, but casual observation still leads me to think laminate sails are more problematic on most cruising boats.<\/p>\n
HydraNet is a woven cloth (and the radial cloth offers much flexibility to get the strength in the correct places). It has many other attributes. Hi George –<\/p>\n We have a Hunter 380 with an in-mast furler that had the original sail. Have owned the boat for a couple of years now and the sail never furled easily because it was old and fat. In fact, it would jam at the least opportune time which could be dangerous.<\/p>\n I ordered a new main from the guys at Mack Sails and immediately noticed a HUGE\u00a0difference in how easily it furled in. Performance improvement for sure, but for me this is a giant relief knowing the sail will function properly when we furl in and out.<\/p>\n Best regards,<\/p>\n Tom Martin <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi George, Agree completely on all points in your recent essay on purchasing new sails sooner rather than later and am glad you wrote about it. I am no racer, but I have a fine sailing boat and I like to sail and sail well. And sailing well is a pleasure that too many cruising sailors put on the back burner and do not put much effort towards. Mostly I hear \u201cI am not racing\u201d or \u201cit is too much bother\u201d when it comes to keeping their boat moving efficiently. This is a shame. And, I would argue, that the expense difference is not all that great in the long run if you care even a little bit about sail shape. Dacron sails just lose their shape sooner even if the integrity of the sail material\/stitching etc. remains strong and leads to many a cruising sailor holding onto sails beyond their useful sailing life. I went with HydraNet Radial and after six seasons of many miles and a high latitude crossing of the Atlantic, their shape remains pretty close to original design shape. I believe I will never go back to Dacron. I will say that, in my experience, too …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":36940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1877],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36943,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36939\/revisions\/36943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMy best, Dick Stevenson, s\/v Alchemy<\/em><\/p>\n
\nSt. Augustine, FL<\/p>\n