Mainsail Part I

No pictures today. There hasn't a whole lot exciting. The main is the same as the staysail, as far as the general construction. I have the first 5 panels together, all of the intermediate reef patches are sewn in with their grommets installed. The first two sets of reefing reinforcement patches are done, two for the leech and two for the luff. Man, are the patches huge. I wanted a bullet proof main, and I noticed today that the kit is an offshore kit, so I guess that means I got it. But the leech patches are 6 layers thick with the largest patch being over 3' long. It is a royal pain to get through the sewing machine, can't wait until those are done. So far, 7 hours, plus maybe another 2 reading and figuring.

I was trying to figure out how I was going to reef the sail, so that during the process of making it I could engineer in the required stuff. Primarily I was trying to figure out if I needed a jack line on the luff so that I could get the reefing cringles down to the boom where they are supposed to be. My current mainsail has a jack line, but I don't think I will put one on my new one. I am just going to try and make sure there is sufficient distance between the reefing cringles and the next grommet, so it will reach. Worse case scenario I can always add the jack line later without any serious modification to the sail.

So, ideally I would be able to reef the mainsail from the cockpit. I personally prefer to have it at the mast, but the winch is already mounted on the cabin roof under the dodger, so what the hey. That means that the lines run through the boom are a waste, I will have to add 3 lines to the mast with cleats to hold them, one for each reefing line. The clew end I can do by hand right in the cockpit, except for maybe the last reef, but we'll have to see when we are rigging the boat. Who knows, may change it all around anyway. Would love to have my halyard winches on the mast, and may yet.

More mainsail later....