Saddly, this is not the type of sail setting that I might hope to be doing on this fine summer day, but it is one more project off my list. I have been playing with my sail for the Passagemaker Dinghy for the last few months, doing an hours work here and there, and it is finally complete. The "set sail" I'm talking about is lacing the sail to the booms that I built a few months back.
I was lucky enough that the kit was available from Sailrite already, and with a couple extra bits for some fun, it came in at a bit under $250. The laying out and sewing of the sail took something around 15-16 hours, including all my mess-ups. Add to that another hour or two to grommet and an hour to hand sew on the leather corners. So for say, 20 hours of work, I saved myself $350 over buying a new sail. Money well saved I say! Plus, my sail (when truly complete) will have some nice custom detailing!!
Kit pieces ready to go.
The instructions provided by Sailrite were pretty fantastic, and the fact that everything is in there less the sewing machine and grommeting tools made the project seem less daunting. Using the material sparingly as I am prone to do, I even have a ton of extra double sided tape and some unopened thread.
To start out, I built the reef and corner patches with double sided tape, making sure to minimize the amount of bubbling that occurs (my later ones looked best). I sewed those in place and then sewed the hem and edge tape on the luff and leach panel. It asked for both 2" and 3" tape, which I added simultaneously. After those were finished, I cut and sewed the diamond intermediate reef patches. With all the little bits on, it was time to sew the panels together.
Sewing patches onto the sail panels.
The starting panels were pretty straight forward, and I taped and sewed pairs of panels together. To finish things off, I started on the longest panels and worked my way toward the luff, adding each pair sequentially and sewing in a manner as to always rolling up the pair of panels being added. This kept the largest portion flat and moving outside of the machine. I felt like a lion tamer trying to keep the sail edging forward in my all-but-too-small of a living room sail loft. Worse still was taping the head and foot. I used the tube the material came wrapped around, with a half inch slit cut the whole length of one side, as a clamp around the sail roll to help tame the beast, but it did not stop the sail from slipping and sliding in a not-so-straight fashion.
One panel finished with all patches attached.
The final taping and sewing was hard on the machine. At some spots, particularly on the corner patches, there were up to 12 layers of cloth or more, and I ended up bending a needle. I hand-turned the machine afterwards over all of the reinforced areas. There was some issue with tension on one of the runs, but I left the unflattering zig-less-zag at the head of the sail rather than pulling all the stitches and redoing that section. It looks strong enough not to be an issue and if it ever is, it's in an easy enough position to fix in the future.
Blurry as heck, but one pair of panels sewn together.
The kit came with leather for the corners, and though I have never seen this on a sail, who am I to say what is and isn't normal for a lug rig. I was able to make 1 hole with the needle provided, but it took me 30 mins, and figuring that I had at least 20 per corner, I decided to find a better way. Using a board and some regular medium sized nails, I tacked the sewing pattern I wanted through all layers of the material. I ended up rounding over the leather (since they provided plenty) making 2 layers per side, but also giving a cleaner finish to the edge. I was able to nail out my sewing pattern and sewing up the work on three edges before I broke the first leather needle. So I waited a week for some new needles to come in (in addition to a sewing awl, and extra grommets for my 2nd reef point setup) before finishing the last corner. The sewing awl, a Speedy Stitcher, worked very well, though it was hard to push 2 layers of thread through with it. Anyway, though this was time consuming, it does give a nice finish to the corners.
Ready to grommet... the corners have been covered in leather.
The last pieces of the puzzle was adding in the #0 and #3 grommets. The #3s went in with a cheap 7/16" grommet anvil kit from Walmart, which did a very nice job, but their 1/4" kit was junk and just pancaked the heck out of the two grommets I tried. I purchased the appropriate kit size #0 kit and was again disappointed with how poorly it worked on the small grommets. at least 2 of the grommets cut out a small section of the cloth between it, and none of the nickel sail grommets look fully punched as I seem to get with the junk grommets that come with the kit. Alas, the task is done.
I googled sail lacing to figure out how it is to be done, and settled on a method that looked cool and "will produce less drag aloft." To be honest, I can't see me trying to race this rig, I just thought it looked pretty cool. I used 325 paracord, about 1/8" line, to lace the sail to the booms. I added reefing nettles (the line in the reef patches) made of glow in the dark 550 parachute cord (3/16"), with the hope that it will make them easier to see if the need arises after dark. I'm not sure if I tied the corners correct, but one is connected through the lacing, the other is independent so that I can adjust the tension. We will see how it works out.
Different lacing patterns, I tried the one on the far right to start.
The last thing to do is raise sail.... or I guess I could go grab the dinghy and install the mast.
