BoatBanter.com - Maxprop's a freaking jerk liar....

"Ian Malcolm" wrote
Knowing and accepting that I am probably talking to one of ADN's many socks, but on the off chance you are for real or
ADN is pretending to be the fount of all nautical wisdom and is relating our replies to some cute young new boatowner,
pretending they are his own words, I'll have a shot at being helpfull. At least its vicarious sailing :-)

Thanks for being helpful. It's what I hoped for when I subscribed here.
Instead I got people bitching me out for being somebody else....

The same person who took all your other photos could take this one . . .

I can do them faster myself. Besides I only need somebody to take pictures
of me.

I really would like to see an over-all shot of the bottom 1/3 or so (where the wire broke) as well as the closeups.
Why not spread it out accross the cockpit and sit on the coacroof to take a picture of as much of it as you can fit in
the frame?

As you saw I put it up instead. Easier to see how it looks that way.

On a dead calm day, wet the sail to give it some weight and tension the luff between two stakes or posts a few feet
off the ground then tension the clew keeping the sail level until the shape of the sail hanging down looks about
right. Crouch down and look at the shape. The maximum depth of the curve should be rather nearer to the luff than the
leach. If its past half way back, replace the sail. If there is *any* doubt, tape accross the sail with black
electrical tape parallell to the foot at 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% of the height KEEPING THE TAPE ABSOLUTLY SLACK and as
streight as you can when you apply it then stretch the sail as above and take us all a photo showing the *whole* sail
from the foot looking towards the head, down at a shallow angle. It also helps ifyou can get someone to hold a thin
streight rod just barely touching the luff and leach at the 40% height so we have a reference line.

Man, that all sounds too complicated. Even if I did all that and found out the
sail is all stretched out I'd still probably want to keep using it. Elle Niño only has two
feet of draft and doesn't go to weather very good because it doesn't get much
grip on the water so bagged out sails probably don't make that much difference.
But you sure sound like you know a lot about sails and their shape.

Good first step, but have you priced replacements? They may come good if soaked for an hour or two in a 25% solution
of a Formic acid ciontaining kettle descaler, working their pistons at intervals and when they have freed up, rinseing
*very* thouroughly, drying and spraying with a good brand of silicone lubricant.

Yes, I'm gonna take all the corroded brass parts out and throw them away.
Like I told Tom I'm gonna use plastic swivel hanks instead and it'll solve
two problems at once. http://www.sailmakerssupply.com/prod_detail_list/24

If they are sewn on, put them aside to fit later otherwise if held by a bronze 'claw' you may need to anneal the claw
with a blow torch while protecting the body of the hank with a sopping wet rag to avoid loosing the temper in the
spring. Any which show signs of cracking in the claw, dont work freely or seem to have lost their spring must be
replaced.

Those claws are corroded and brittle. Two claws broke when I tried
to pry them off with a screwdriver That's why I got a couple new ones.
But the new ones were so stiff I had to hit them with a hammer to close
them up. I couldn't even squeeze them together with pliars.

Getting a sail shop to do *anything* wont be cheap and they have a much better press for putting eyelets in than you
or I can hope to have. Take the hanks off then ask the shop if the sail is worth saving and if so, roughly how much to
do the whole job except refitting the hanks? N.B. a general Canvas shop will NOT have the expertize you need unless
they have a sailmaker on the staff.

That's why I decided to do it myself. Like I said to Tom, I'm gonna get
some sail tape and use a friend's sewing machine and sew it on myself. I can
even put in a little bolt rope to fit the hole in the swivel hanks.

Unless the holes are badly chewed, you can probably re-use them if you
go to a slightly larger size. You use the punch in the eyelet kit to cut the holes. A small patch hand sewn over the
luff wire and accross both sides of the hole can be used to fix any bad ones. Tapeing the whole luff unless done by a
pro, is likely to upset the luff tensioning and give an unsatisfactory result.

Maybe if I'm careful with sewing it and make sure the tape is tight it'll
work. Besides when pulling the halyard real hard it'll stretch the cloth out.
That's one reason why I don't want wire in the luff. It doesn't stretch...

Ideally you'd hand stitch the rings for all the new eyelets before closing the 'hat' over the new leathering using the
punch and die in the kit.

Won't need to do any of that with the plastic screw on swivel hanks....

To get a streight luff. When hoisted on a small boat, all the load should be on the luff wire with the forestay just
slack. All the hanks do is controll it while hoisting or lowering. Consult a decent book on traditional knotcraft or
sailmaking for the correct way to tye the hanks in.

Won't it all be on the luff anyway? It'll have tape and a little bolt rope to
take the pull away from the stay.

NO WAY. Only applicable to a sail with a high tensile fabric tape the whole length of the luff.

Is luff tape high tensile fabric?

What you actually need is a loosely fitted luff wire extending right to the eye at one end and actually forming part
of that eye and with a talurit eye in the other end about an inch beyond the corner of the sail. The eye at the free
end of the sail is laced to the corner to set the cloth tension for best sail shape after the sail has been hoisted as
tight as possible. Thereafter check the laceing occasionaly. Its handiest to have the head fixed to the wire and the
tack free.

That's how it used to be but it's too hard for me to do that myself.....

DONT cut the sail. Oxalic acid will dissolve the rust. Its usually sold as a powder wood bleach. I reccomend a strong
solution in hot water, applied and left to dry in the sun a few times then the next day more solution and gently
working at the edge will probably free up whats left of the wire. Once you have removed it, patch any holes and work
a piece of solid wire in to let you pull through a nice new piece of 3mm 7x19, which it's worth treating with melted
beeswax before you use it. Then you just need to get the talurits on the end swaged, and do the other items discussed
above and you're golden.

I won't cut the sail. I'll snip the stitches in a few places and get the
wire out the back way. I can resew the sail by hand using the original
holes and it'll be easy to push the needle through.

There are companies that re-proof sails commercially. I am not sure if its worth doing though. Dodgy seams can be
oversewn by hand if the sail cloth is still sound enough to hold stitches, if not, its new sail time. There is a
product callled seamcoat or something like that for treating properly stiched seams to protect and strengthen
otherwise sound seams. DONT use ArmourAll. It wont do any good and will make futture repair work impossible.

OK I won't use ArmourAll. It would probably make me slip right off the
deck anyway. Maybe I can spray it with starch.

How about a nice picture of you sailing just for me? It would cheer me up in our horrible winter weather no end. I'd
like to see you on the helm with the boat sailing with a bone in her teeth.

I'll see what I can do since you've been so nice to me. Maybe I could get
somebody in another boat to take a picture like that.... A bone in her teeth means
fast, doesn't it? Thanks, you've been very helpful.

Cheers,
Ellen