New Sails for Lyova-Marie

[chrisring]

I am preparing to order material for a new set of sails for my 15' cat ketch rigged Sharpie.

http://www.woodenboat.com/lyova-marie

Over the years, I have sailed her with a cat rigged spritsail, and also the cat ketch rig. As I am getting older, I prefer the cat ketch because its easier to handle the given area, and I can just leave the mizzen home instead of dealing with a reef most of the time.
She balances very nicely with the mainsail alone in a fresh breeze.
In the past I have built sails using cotton mostly, some dacron, and even nylon and Polytarp. Usually they are vertical cut with draft induced by the edge cut method. I made one cat rigged crosscut spritsail of 119' of 4oz dacron using a computer program Sailcut to plot the panels. As I usually sail in light air and the cloth was quite firm, I left the luff almost straight. This turned out quite well.
On this set of sails, I am considering using 3.8oz "egyptian cotton" colored dacron by Challenger from Duckworks for both the vertical cut 85' main and the 48' mizzen. If I split the 56" cloth I will be dealing with 14" panels. I ordered one yard as a sample and though it is firmer than I would like for easier handling, it is still a bit light for the 85' main. I think I should use a combination of both methods to induce draft.
Here is a sketch of the sail plan:

http://i1371.photobucket.com/albums/...pseaf15cb3.jpg

and here is a polytarp mockup of the rig that works quite well. (mizzen sprit need peaking)

http://i1371.photobucket.com/albums/...ps68e3a037.jpg
and here:
http://i1371.photobucket.com/albums/...psa7aa2d37.jpg

I feel a bit challenged seaming in draft on a vertical cut sail, even with the help of the sailcut computer program, and would very much welcome any comments or suggestions. I've got a good mind to kind of wing it on the floor using a "by guess and by god" broad seam method, but some help with chord depth and location to input the computer program would give me more confidence.
Chris Ring in Austin, Texas

[Todd Bradshaw]

A few general comments in no specific order:

- Sail shaping using edge round and broadseaming is never an either/or thing. They need to work together to both create and position the sail's draft (as well as to adjust luff entry angles on cross-cut or radially-cut sails).

- Challenge 3.8 oz. Egyptian Cream is good fabric, but if you ever intend to sail in anything other than light wind, it's awfully light for that mainsail. Once you are up above about 75 sq. ft. you are usually pushing your luck with 3.8 oz. cloth. On a vertical cut, this can lead to a lot of undesired stretch (especially along the leech, creating flapping with no good way to fix it). It would be worth the extra money to go up to their 5.53 oz. Egyptian for the main. It will work better and last longer.

- The cloth firmness is just something we have to live with these days. Making the cloth in traditional colors and avoiding making it super-stiff is about as far as any of the Dacron manufacturers are willing to go. It is nice for dimensional stability, but lacks a bit in handling characteristics.

- Your sprit booms will probably work better with their forward ends a bit higher on the masts. The self-vanging nature (helping to control excessive top twist on the sail) of the sprit boom is at its best with a bit broader triangle of tension being created by the boom, mast and sail's foot. The booms are usually set up with more of a downward angle as they approach the clew corner.

- I haven't been particularly impressed with what I have seen from Sailcut with regard to four-sided, traditional sails. Any software program is only as good as the information that was put into it by its designers - and in the case of traditional sails, I think they left out or didn't understand some things. Judging by your post, I suspect you could probably do just as well or better turning off the computer and going "old style" on this one. A vertically cut spritsail is pretty easy to design on the floor.

Specifics for these sails:
(There is a photo series where I documented building lugsails in Photobucket. Not everything will apply to a spritsail as there are some differences, but a lot of the work is very similar and seeing what these steps actually look like may help. The file is here:
http://s1303.photobucket.com/user/To...?sort=9&page=1)

What do we know for these sails?

- The luff for a spritsail will have some luff round to help create draft. After stringing out the sail's straight-line profile on the floor, luff round points will be plotted out in front of the string along the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 height chords. For "typical draft" we measure the chords and will add about 2.7% of chord width out ahead of the string at the luff (100" chord measurement, add 2.7"). We do this at the three chord heights and then take a batten and fair a convex luff curve from the tack corner through the three new spots and up to the throat corner (fudging a little bit where needed to get a nice smooth curve). The resulting curve will be our actual luff shape and 2.7% generally produces a draft amount of about 1' draft for every 10' of chord width, typical for most cruising boats. Unlike the lugsail series, a spritsail is cut with a curved luff and a straight head, where the lug had a straight luff and a curved head.

- The leech - We could design and cut our spritsail leech straight, but it would start to flap fairly soon as the cloth aged. Instead, we cut the leech in a concave hollowed shape, having maybe 1" of hollow added for every 6'-8' of leech length (it varies somewhat with different fabrics).

- The head edge of a spritsail should be cut dead straight. It will tend to sag a little bit in use and that sag creates draft up there. We broadseam a triangular section along the head, similar to the one shown on the lugsail series to move the sag-draft down away from the edge. The deepest part of the triangular section should be about 45% of the way aft along the head edge. We'll get more into broadseaming in a minute.

- The foot: Unlike a boomless spritsail, or one where the clew will be poled-out, a sprit boom also requires a dead straight foot, as a foot roach would just flap. That area will also get a triangular section of broadseaming for draft creation and placement. Again, our maximum triangle height will be about 45% aft, and the peak of the broadseam triangle should be about in the area where we expect our maximum sail draft to be. It will be a larger, deeper triangle than the one we made along the head edge.

- So the first physical steps are going to be lofting the plan out on the floor with temporary strings and then with tape. Once done, we will have our exact edge shapes for the rounded luff, the hollowed leech, and the straight head and foot. We'll also have our triangular broadseaming areas marked. Fabric panels can then be laid out and assembled over our lofting, and in traditional building we make our assembled sail body a couple inches bigger all around as we panel it. Once basted together, it can be trimmed to it's exact size. That way we don't lose edge length from broadseaming. And don't forget to include extra for the eventual leech hem, or any other edge you plan to hem, rather than bind.

Broadseaming: .... is a fairly inexact science, masquerading as an art. It is a cumulative effect - meaning that a sail with wide panels may have some pretty dramatically wide broadseams, where a narrow-paneled sail may generate the same shape with more, but narrower broadseams because it has many more panel seams where you can make them. In the center of your sail, between the triangular broadseam zones, your seam widths should be a constant 1/2"-5/8". Once you reach the broadseam zones along the head or foot, the seam overlap should start to gradually widen as you approach the sail's edges. A rule of thumb for the old standard 36" wide, medium-firm cloth was to increase the overlap at a rate of about 1/2" for every 30" of broadseam length. For cloth panels a bit under half of that, the rate would be proportionally smaller (or you could broadseam every other panel seam). In areas where the triangles are short, the broadseams will be tiny. Broadseams that start at the deeper parts of the broadseam zone triangles will be substantially wider by the time they get to the sail's edges.

Do I actually measure all these and calculate target ending widths? No. I eyeball the length and lay in a nice taper that ends up about where it was supposed to be. That comes with a lot of practice. For 14" cloth you will have a lot of broadseams that will end up with an increase of maybe 1/4" of seam width, which should make for a pretty nicely smooth sail.

The final "twist" for broadseams is flare. We would like to end up with a little bit of cup-shape along the head and foot edges. It keeps air from sneaking around from the high pressure side of the sail to the low pressure side and robbing us of power (the end-plate effect). So when laying in the last few inches of a broadseam, we increase our overlap rate just a little bit as we near the edge. We don't want to hook the edge, but we want just a small amount of cupping down there. You can actually pick up the corner of a basted sail and eyeball this on the loft floor.

Once all panels have been basted together with seam tape you can locate the corners and points indicating round or hollow and cut the blank down to its final shape before sewing the seams. Or... you can sew the seams and trim off the excess over the lofting later. Both work fine. After that, it's mostly just a matter of a lot of tedious work patching corners, finishing edges and installing grommets. This is a standing lugsail, but the lower broadseam zone is indicated and you can see the changes in seam width in the zone.



Hope this helps.

[PatrickXavier]

Hope this helps.

If it doesn't, it's not for the lack of effort. Your generosity of knowledge and experience is just outstanding.

[chrisring]

If it doesn't, it's not for the lack of effort. Your generosity of knowledge and experience is just outstanding.

Yeah, what he said... outstanding. I never dreampt I would get such a wealth of information.
So, as I suspected the 3.8 oz is light for the 85' mainsail. In which case, I must decide if I make both sails of the heavier 5.53 or use 3.8 for the mizzen. The only reason to make both of the same cloth is convenience cutting tape and patches from scrap and of course the color/ light aesthetics. If I order both weights, would it make sense to use the 5.53 for tape and patches on both sails to kind of bring them together aesthetically?
Thanks for the link to the lugsail construction it clears up some of the uncertainties I had. Last week, searching "egyptian dacron" I came across a thread you started on the WCHA forums "Replicating a 1908 Morris Lateen". Impressed and inspired by your writing and the way you described that process, I did some more searching and found you had indeed written a book, and I immediately ordered Canoe Rig the Essence and the Art. It arrived yesterday and I was reading it about the time you posted your thoughtful and personal response to my request for comments and suggestions.
Living here in land locked Central Texas, not many people know boats- especially old style wooden sailing craft. I've always winced a bit when people exclaim " oh what a beautiful boat!" sometimes they even add "Is it Chinese?". I know they are really looking at the sails. Having lived in New England as a child and reading about boat building my whole life, I've always known that my sails were much less than what they could be. I'm looking forward to turning out a set I can really be proud of. I really appreciate your help.

[Todd Bradshaw]

With light behind them, a 3.9 oz. mizzen will look a bit lighter in color than a 5.53 oz. main, if that matters. We can also consider that since all four corners of these sails are held out by the spars, there is nothing that has to "fly" as such, so the additional weight from making the mizzen from heavier cloth than what is required isn't likely to cost anything serious in performance. The heavier fabric will also yield more durability and a bit longer UV lifespan. On the other hand, a five ounce mizzen will cost a bit more and may be a somewhat more bulky package to bundle up and stow, so you could go either way on it.

You could certainly bind the edges of a 4 oz. sail with 5 oz. cloth if desired. For corner patching we are shooting for a smooth transition from one layer to several layers and I think I'd make at least the first (largest) patch layer from the same fabric as the main part of the sail, in an effort to minimize potential transition problems (wrinkles or weak spots at the patch edge). For the other patch layers under it, it probably doesn't matter which cloth you use.

Both these sails are long enough on their luffs that it is probably worth using a boltrope for luff reinforcement. This could either be sewn on by hand (fairly tricky to do and get it right with proper tension, but possible) or the typical "rope inside a tube of luff tape fabric" with the ends seized to the throat and tack corners. On small lugs, our main focus is just to make a really strong and stretch-resistant luff that can stand up to high downhaul tensions. Doubling up the luff tape will do this on their short straight luffs. For a spritsail with long-ish curved luff, rope may be a better option. It is installed under a bit of tension (rope a little shorter than the edge - how much depends on the rope type) and we want to have to apply some halyard tension in order to get the luff stretched out smoothly in use. If it's windy out there, we can add more halyard tension. This gathers the luff round cloth right behind the mast in a vertical wrinkle (which doesn't seem to hurt performance) and it flattens the rest of the sail and depowers it a bit (which generally helps performance). You may also want to do this in really light air, because the light airflow over the sail won't stay attached as well (follow a belly curve as dramatic) in really light air, and the flatter sail may work better. In more medium conditions you can back down to just enough luff/halyard tension to yield a smooth, wrinkle-free luff and the normal amount of sail draft.

There are a variety of ways to secure the ends of the rope running free inside the cloth luff tube. On a lot of modern production sails, it is simply seized to the tube itself at the top and bottom ends (usually adequate, but rather marginal from a strength standpoint). A heavy-duty approach would be to splice an eye with a thimble at each end of the rope. Then you cut a small recess shaped like one side of the eye in the corner patches at the tack and throat to partially recess the eye into the sail's edge. Finally, you seize the eye to a corner grommet next to it. Instead of attaching your tack fitting and halyard to the corner grommets, as you might normally do, you attach them to the eyes and the seizing brings the corner grommet and the rest of the sail along with it.

It's also often possible to use a half-way approach where you have no eyes, but seize the ends of the rope both around the luff tape tube and also into the thickest section of the corner patches. It's stronger than the first option and less involved than the second method. However you choose to arrive at it, we just want to make sure that we can put pretty good tension on the boltrope when needed without the sail coming apart.

[chrisring]

Again, thanks for your input. The mizzen is small enough the extra bulk of heavier cloth is not a problem furling, and on a rare occasion it might be used as a storm sail and would give piece of mind being of heavier weight, so 5.53 all around it is.

Today, I sewed a bit of 1/4" ( 6mm) polyester three strand to a bit of 2" dacron tape as described in your Canoe rig book and it looks really good. I've hand sewn bolt rope before, a very long time ago , it was tedious, but know I can do it. Its probably easier with polyester on polyester than the kinky manila on cotton muslin I once managed to do long ago. I still have a hand sewn muslin sail with jute boltrope twisted up from craft store macrame cord and sewn with bees waxed kite string done in the '70s that fared way better. Anyway, the quicker easier machine sewn tape method worked very well on my test piece and I really like the way it looks. Do you see any problem afixing bolt rope this way on spritsails this size?
The 1/4" I have came from R&W of New Bedford is hemp colored and is suggested/marketed as bolt rope. It has perceptible stretch to it with my bare hands probably more than the heavy dacron cloth. I also have 100' of the same stuff in a 8mm (5/16") size that might be more appropriate for the mainsail bolt rope. I was planning to rope the head and foot of both sails also, with rat tails at the leach.
I've also got some real hemp from R&W I bought last year planning to sew onto my existing cotton suit that I never got around to doing . My feeling is they just aren't worth the trouble, they are stretched out and would need to be trimmed down to look right first.

[chrisring]

Just for entertainment - closeup of kite string sewn muslin sail with home made jute bolt rope and reef points circa 1978 or 79. This sail drove my Pete Culler design Good Little Skiff for many miles, then my next boat, prototype for my Westport Sharpie years after that. It has patches on patches. My father made it for me as a gift when I built my first boat, Culler's GLS. I learned "sail making" by studying this sail and patching it numerous times.

http://i1371.photobucket.com/albums/ag294/chrisring1/20140911_211858_zps2711b61f.jpg

And today's bolt rope experiment on my trusty singer 403a which I still love even though I have a brand new bad ass Sailrite LZ1. (I think the Singer skipped that stitch out of jealousy, she never skipped one before, and she punched through that rope like a champ)

http://i1371.photobucket.com/albums/...psf59b33c6.jpg

The original Westport Sharpie in its home waters Westport Point Mass about 1971. My father most likely sewed the mizzen. I think he cut down the original cat rigged spritsail and added the mizzen for the same reason I prefer the ketch rig. When this photo was taken I had long before moved to Texas with my mother and he had a new family up there.

http://i1371.photobucket.com/albums/...ps21711417.jpg

[Todd Bradshaw]

The 5/16" machine-sewn has a decent chance of doing the job and will usually make for a great looking boltrope with some tension on it. However, when it comes to being able to really fine tune the rope to tension the edge, it's pretty hard to beat the rope in a tube, seized and adjusted at the ends. There is an article showing how I rat-tail synthetic line here:

http://www.frayedknotarts.com/tutorials/rattail.html

It's certainly been done and some of the sailcloth companies used to sell pre-sewn roped luff tape. I have worked on quite a few older cruising boat sails over the years that came with machine sewn bolt rope, but I'm not fond of surprises. I think I'd make up a test chunk maybe five or six feet long and see how it would do for generating tension on the edge before making the commitment to machine sew it on a bigger sail where more adjustability might be nice. Maybe shoot for something that when sewn requires 1"-1.5" of stretch at moderate pressure to pull a 6' chunk of the luff tape smooth.

[chrisring]

My cloth is on back order, but I continue on with the project. I cleared the living room floor and lay the mainsail out with blue tape. The sail is too large to get a good photo, so I made a scale drawing of the layout as it stands today. As I am a (newly admitted)
neophyte, and am not that certain what I am doing, I put this up hoping for constructive criticism, and I also welcome comment on the whole sailplan as seen in the original post in general.
Noticing my major dimensions are missing, they are as follows- luff- 12' 0", foot- 8' 1", leech- 12' 6", head-6' 0". Next is the Mizzen layout.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Looks build-able to me.

[chrisring]

And then the Mizzen. Thanks Todd for the feedback. I did a mockup of the above mainsail using kraft paper, and it has considerable shape. A bit full if anything, the leech actually crept aft as I taped the broadseamed areas- good advice to trim it last.
In the past I have tried to make the mizzen a bit flatter than the mainsail based on some fatherly advice a long time ago, but I do not recall hearing that from any other source, and I question its validity. Seems like as this is a driving sail, not just a trim tab like on a yawl, I would want similar draft as the mainsail. Any Opinions?




Mizzen Perimeter Dimensions- luff- 9' 0", foot- 6' 10", leech 9' 6", head- 4' 10".

[Todd Bradshaw]

Seems like as this is a driving sail, not just a trim tab like on a yawl, I would want similar draft as the mainsail. Any Opinions?

That's what I would do. This isn't just a little hanky being hung out there to adjust helm balance, it's a fairly large portion of your sail area. Plus, you have both a sprit and sprit-boom available to help flatten it if desired. The actual governing factor in how much draft is present may well be how much flex there is in the mizzenmast, as you will have a pretty good example of the bow-and-arrow principle going on. Tension the spars more, the mast bends and the draft goes away, from using up the luff round. Ease the sprit tensions, mast straightens more and the luff round creates sail draft. Depending on what conditions you typically enjoy sailing in, there are probably "ideal" tapers for both masts, which would yield the best all-round performance, given a specific luff curve being used. On small class-racers, for example, these things tend to get tweaked over the years through thousands of sailing miles on hundreds of boats and can eventually arrive at specific luff curves and spar combinations that usually work best in most racing conditions. On a one-off, you can drive yourself nuts trying to find the "magical" combinations, so it's usually more a case of picking what seems to be within the "normal" range and living within it's capabilities and limitations as you get used to sailing the boat. It's also certainly possible to stick a different skipper, with a different trimming, tacking and steering style in your finely-tuned boat and to find that it's set up all wrong for him.

[chrisring]

So, I have completed my new sails for Lyova-Marie.
Many thanks to Todd B for your invaluable help.
It has been my project while I recover from elbow surgery, so it has been kind of slow.
First, when I called to order material, it turned out the stuff they sent a sample of was not available. I had to switch to another supplier, Sailrite. When I called to order the cloth, the fellow taking the order very convincingly told me the cloth I was ordering (5.5 oz cream dacron)was way too heavy, that I would be unhappy with the resulting sails and pretty much insisted I order 4 oz cloth.
So I ordered the 4 OZ.
It was back ordered over 2 weeks.
The cloth being 36" wide I revised my plans to use 12" panel widths.
So, the happy day arrived, and I cut panels for the main and basted the flat areas with tape, then proceeded to baste the broadseamed areas.

At this point, I was ready to sew the panel seams and cut the edges to my layout lines. Earlier, I had drilled very small holes into my floor at each corner of my layouts. When I cut the edges, I left tabs with a small hole at each corner to index the sail on the layout while I basted the corner patches. Cut paper clips made very nice pins I could spring a batten to, and index layers together with. The patch layouts were drawn on kraft paper taped over the layout at each corner.

The patch layers also had a small tab at the corners to index them over the layout while I tape basted them to the sail. After sewing the patches, I trimmed off the tabs and was ready for bolt rope.

n Marino's book, I learned that by sewing with the rope on top, the rope will be shorter than the tape, and sewing with the cloth on top has the opposite effect. Since I am using the rope to gather and control the luff, and to a certain extent the foot and head, I sewed 68' as shown above. That piece of wood in the foreground was actually an attempt at making an elaborate magnetic jig to center both cloth and rope, but it actually served better as a simple fence to center the tape. The sewing went fast and easy centering the rope by eye.
Next, I was ready to assemble the bolt rope tape to the sail itself. I gathered several awls and ice picks together and went out to the patio where I had a 16' 2X6 laid on some tables. I modified an office stapler as shown to pin the bolt tape to the sail edge under tension.


Working one edge at a time, I stretched the edges out so they laid nice and flat without any bias elongation or deformation, and spiked each corner with an awl. Then I did the same with the bolt rope tape, pulling with considerable force approximating halyard and snotter tensions on the given edges. When I had my tensions where I liked them I stapled the heck out of them, unspiked the assemblies, and dragged the whole business into the house to sew them.


At this point, I did not take any more pictures, but I used 3/8" brass grommets at the luff, peak and clews, and 1/2" at the tack and throats. I have bent the sails to their masts, but have only set it up once. I'm pleased with them, but if I did it over, I would use smaller 1/4" bolt rope on the mizzen instead of the 5/16" on both sails- tension is a bit much for the smaller sail. As my elbow is still recovering, I can not step the masts myself, and reaching out to adjust snotters etc I simply can not be doing right now. But as soon as a friend comes over to help, I'll get pictures and post them on this thread.
I am planning to attend the Wood Boat Festival in Port Aransas next weekend with a friend who can step my masts etc and I hope I can get some sailing in too.

[chrisring]

I am re-reading this post from over 8 years ago and want to express my gratitude to Todd Bradshaw for his input back then. The sails turned out really well thanks to his help.
If you read the thread, you will see Todd recommended a 5 1/2 ounce cloth for my larger mainsail, and when I called Sailrite to order the cloth, the salesman insisted the 4 ounce would be adequate (he claimed to have same cloth on his Caledonia Yawl, a twenty footer, and that it should be more than adequate for my 15 foot sharpie. Sounds convincing, but we both failed to factor in the difference in stability between the two boats). I used the 4 ounce and sure enough, draft moved aft to the point I had to take in some seams a few years ago and they have continued to stretch.
Now, I am preparing to make another set of sails. Of course the price of cloth has skyrocketed and the cream color is not only 33$ per yard for the 4 OZ, the heavier weight is unavailable. I am going to use 4 oz again, but it will be standard cloth which is firmer and stiffer than the soft "Egyptian Cotton" I used before. My intention is to be more careful about the conditions I sail in, and as i enter advanced old age, I am less inclined to sail her as hard as I did just a few years ago anyway.
This is a picture from when the sails were pretty new:20150208_135542.jpg

And here are a couple from last fall: 310855274_10229674656196045_9151741918375358923_n (1).jpg310766746_10229674652275947_1316093287592782966_n (2).jpg
Not too bad, and she is still usually the fastest boat when I sail around other home builds (sometimes literally around), but pointing ability is diminished and a few people have made disparaging comments about the sprit rig compared to the lugsail based on that somewhat dull pointing ability. Being an ardent proponent of the sprit rig, I feel duty bound to maintain my rig at its best.

[The Jeff]

I like it! Nice to see somebody else with a sprit rig.

[johngsandusky]

Great thread, thanks for the update!
I love the boat.