Jim Woodward wrote:

There are thousands of small working sailboats in Eastern Indonesia
(Nusatengara -- Bali, Lombok, Rinca, Komodo, Flores, Solor, Alor) --
they usually sail when the wind is right and often motor on a
putt-putt when it's not. They're taxis, delivery trucks, fishboats,
family cars, etc.

Most of the sails look like they were cut from tablecloths -- large
blue and white squares, for example. I'm not sure we saw anything
that would be recognized as "sailcloth" here.

A lot of the same sort of boats we saw use blue poly tarp material for sails. At night, it's a roof, by day,
it's a sail, come harvest time, you can use it to gather rice.... now *that's* efficency. Who says modern
technology has done nothing to improve mankind's lot!



Since they obviously do the job, perhaps we should start a fad here
for blue and white sails. Would save money....

Depends on what you mean by 'do the job.' I suspect that these sails performance on points of sail more than 30
degrees above DDW would disappoint even Parallax.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King