New Sails

We have new sails to play with!  Four in all.  I had the main surveyed and it turns out it needed replacing.  It could have been repaired, but it wouldn’t have been worthwhile.  I’d have needed to replace it before heading across an ocean anyway.

I also needed storm sails.  A storm jib and a storm trisail have been added to the inventory.  Both have florescent visibility patches.  I still need to add some deck hardware for the trisail sheets and a new trisail halyard which will double as a spare topping lift, but the storm jib had a new halyard added around this time last year.  It gets hanked on to a solent stay, also added last year, that will allow the genoa to be furled when the storm jib is in use.  The solent stay is a temporary inner forestay that is anchored to the deck just abaft of the forestay the genoa furls around.  When the solent stay is not in use it is disconnected from the foredeck and anchored to the mast.

Lastly, I’ve added a drifter to the sail inventory.  The drifter is a light air sail that will allow us to sail up wind where the asymmetrical spinnaker is for down wind use.  Both are made out of colored nylon and both have their own continuous loop furler.  The spinnaker tack is anchored to a removable bowsprit and the drifter is anchored to the pad eye used for the solent stay.

For more information on drifters, Carol Hasse’s article is well worth reading:
http://www.porttownsendsails.com/pdf/light_air_sails.pdf