Mainsail Part II

18 hours in, and it now looks like a sail. All 9 panels are together, all the patches, the leech line and cleats, the foot and luff boltropes have been sewn in and hand stitched at each end to hold them in place. All that is left now is a little piece of edging that will overlap the boltrope as it goes around the head onto the leech. I should have pictures of that tomorrow. Then it is on to hand stitching. 9 sewn in rings, leather, outhaul slug, and all the sliders for the mast track. Its a lot more hand work than the staysail.

I've also decided to put the staysail back under the sewing machine. The tapes along the edges were only sewn with a single row of stitching. I doubled them up on the main, and I think I like that better, so I am going to add the second row of stitching all around the staysail too. It didn't call for it in the instructions, but what can it hurt.

So, I got two 4oz rolls of thread with each sail kit. Today I finished the first roll, and both sails are pretty much done. Funny thing is, I ordered an extra four 4oz rolls for future projects. It'll probably be a hundred years before I need to buy more thread.

The directions for the mainsail were horrible. I thought they were really good when I first read them, but after trying to follow them while building the sail, I realize they were missing a lot of info, some of it was wrong, and some of it just wouldn't work on this sail. Luckily I had done the staysail first and had some idea how it should go together. I studied my existing main, and did a lot of digging in Emiliano's book, but I figured out how to do it right for my application. I was really surprised how poorly my existing mainsail was put together in comparison to this new one. I guess it was designed for sailing around the great lakes and not for offshore. I picked out the weak points and made sure that the new main does not suffer from the same problems.

 An old pic from early on, sewing the intermediate reef patches. I thought it was strange that these patches were only 3" square, while the ones on the staysail were 4" square. I guess there isn't a whole lot of stress on these points. The sail isn't that wide at the reef points. I know that in many cases, people don't even bother to tie them up.

 All the big parts put together. The reinforcement patches are all done, its ready for some edging to finish it up.

 After putting the leech tape on, the leech line and the cam cleats, I went ahead and finished the foot of the sail with its boltrope. Then I thought, what the hell, lets see how it fits in the boom. Like a glove. Makes my heart go pitter patter. The extra material is the draft.

Poor picture of a cam cleat. They are the exact same setup as the staysail, only this sail has 4 of them, one for each reef and one for the whole sail.

Much fun.... However, I am looking forward to getting it finished so that I can move onto the next project. The real excitement will be when I bend them to the mast and let wind fill them up. Ahh, the pain of waiting.

Its supposed to rain tomorrow, so I plan to get lots of the hand work done. I would love to finish the sail, but that might be pushing it.

Until later....