Old sails?

[Ron Williamson]

How do you know their condition,(blown out or not)without hoisting and sailing?
Do you just make assumptions regarding what you see when you pull them outta the bag?
ie.worn and torn stitching,stretched stitch holes,
really soft cloth
What else?
Thanks
R

[Adamant]

Open them up and start trying to rip out the seams. If you see anything that is suspect give it you're all. If it stays together raise it up and try it out, what can you loose.

[John B]

Stretch the luff between the garage and the fencepost, then lift the clew off the ground with a short "sheet" while lying on your side sighting through the chord to see if it has a nice shape. make swishing sounds for ambiance. you can get a start point for your sheet lead that way too.

PS you don't really have to lie on your side.

[ 10-18-2005, 02:33 AM: Message edited by: John B ]

[Todd Bradshaw]

You don't. I've been building sails for 25 years now and I wouldn't make that call without seeing them hoisted and working. I can tell you if the thread is rotten, or by slitting and test-tearing the fabric if the cloth is getting rotten or if it looks like the bolt rope has shortened up over time (which can cause the sail to look blown-out when it really isn't) or if it's showing a lot of wear, abrasion or obvious damage but it needs to be in use, on the boat, with the boltrope or slugs in the track or the jib hanked to the wire to really get a decent look at the shape.

North puts (or at least used to put) a little label on some of their sails (headsails mostly) that listed the maximum wind speed range for that sail. This is because you can blow out a brand new sail in fifteen minutes if you push it too far beyond it's intended range. You could then take that sail and hang it up from trees in the front yard and with a little tweaking on the corners it would probably look just fine and nearly new. You might never even suspect that it had problems until you went sailing with it. There just isn't a static test that can give you anywhere near enough information to really feel confident when it comes to investing a pile of money into one. This doesn't mean that certain faults can't be corrected, but dumping the bag out on the lawn and hanging it between the trees can be pretty risky as a means of evaluation.

And if it's one that's been sent to one of those "sail reconditioning" houses, where they bleach the crap out of them and then paint them with nice white resin, I'd run the other direction. Almost every one of those that I've ever had come in has had serious shape problems glued-in by their process. Just ask Captain Pre-Capsize about the bang-up job they did on his.

[Ron Williamson]

Thanks,that's kinda what I figured.
I'm looking at an old boat that comes with a pile of sails(10 bags!!)A main,a coupla genoas,working jib,a staysail(?),storm jib,spinnaker....
For my use I'd only really be concerned about the main,one genny and the working jib.
R

[lagspiller]

What is a blown out sail...
Answer: Its relative.

For crack racing, a couple of seasons or less is plenty for a sail. For more normal racing a longer lifespan. For Cruising a lot longer.

As the sail deforms, it loses its ability to point upwind. The more blown-out is, the less height you get.

A sail is blown out when it doesn't get acceptable height for the type of sailing you do.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Yes, but it's not quite that simple. "Blown-out" is a very overused term. The fabric can actually be stretched beyond the point of recovery, or more commonly, lose the ability of it's weave to stay "square" and stable as it was originally woven and treated to do. As this happens, the draft tends to move aft and often deepen, which are the factors which generally diminsh pointing ability. Though this may not be as important to cruising sailors as it is to racers, it can still be quite noticable. You might also notice that your speeds have dropped and that the deeper draft may be overpowering the boat in some conditions, making it harder to control. Adjusting the tensions pulling on the edges and/or corners of the sail may no longer allow you to flatten the sail in heavy air when you would prefer less power. Other, more obvious problems like a lot of leech flapping may also be present.

Some of these symptoms can also be duplicated by other conditions than just blown-out fabric. A shrunken boltrope, for example can create excessive, hard-to-control draft and is fairly easy to cure. Incorrect rig tensions, mast bend or lack of it and similar hardware problems can also be to blame, so you really need to look at the whole package before deciding whether a sail is worth buying or really is blown-out.