"Wilbur Hubbard" wrote in message
news.com...
trim

Assuming that the sail is attached to the boom and not loose footed,
to properly rope the foot the sail is stretched, often using a tackle,
and then the rope is sewn to the foot.

Wrong! Have you ever tried 'stretching' Dacron? Just why the hell do you
think Dacron is the material of choice for sails (except for spinnakers,
etc)? It's precicesly because Dacron stretches very little. For the same
reason, they make halyard line from dacron and other materials that barely
stretch or don't stretch at all.

When the nylon bolt rope is sewn into a shelf-footed main it is not
pre-stretched at all. The shelf of a shelf-footed sail is not tensioned at
all when the sail is properly sown. IOW, the bolt rope, if any, is relaxed
and the Dacron material is actually somewhat puckered fore and aft around
the bolt rope when the sail is set with a full belly. When the clew is
hauled out the belly in the sail assumes less of a curve as the nylon bolt
rope stretches and commences to pull flat the puckers. If it was
pre-stretched as you claim then the Dacron would end up tearing when it was
strained even more by the outhaul because Dacron doesn't hardly stretch by
the very nature of the material.

Get a clue and shut your yap when attempting to post about things you have
no intimate knowledge about.

Wilbur Hubbard




The purpose of all this is to
reinforce the foot of the sail and to limit the amount that the sail
can be stretched by the out haul.

As the purpose of the foot rope is to limit the stretch of the foot of
the sail, using a nylon rope would defeat the basic reason for the
roping as nylon rope has up to 40% stretch and it would be impossible
to sew the rope to the sail to do this - it would mean that the foot
would be 40% shorter with tension released.

Try http://www.schattauersails.com/ultimateoffshore.html
and http://www.sailmakerssupply.com/prod_detail_list/26
for additional information.



It is becoming more and more plain that you know NOTHING about a
shelf-footed mainsail. Like you apparently seem to know nothing about just
about all other aspects of sailing.


Wilbur Hubbard