[Public-List] Main sail modification?

[elyse.pastor at sympatico.ca]

Hello Gord, hello George,
Thanks for the fast reply.
 
To Gord
I have the feeling that you insist, and that our main sail is extreemley bad and the purchase of a new one would solve basically all the problems (I assume it is your experience??). Well it is the purchase of about $2,500 (I guess) that we have to evaluate - certainly I wanted to modify the old one and see if we can improve? We just do not want to purchase the new one and have the same problem after that...???!!! Thanks again for your info - Elyse and I will think about it and hopefully make some decission before the year-end.
 
To George - 
??How old is "fairly old?"
We only own the Boat since 2008 - thus have no idea on the age of the sail. But we are certain that it is older then 10 years and our guess is 15, 20 or even more. However, we had a sail manufacturer (Triton, Ontario) modify it in spring 2009 and they thought, that the sail was not in such a bad condition that we needed to purchase a new-one. Thus they made the new set of full battens with the new style of rail.
 
What do w e
do for higher winds - a smaller Jib - something like an 80 or so
(above wind of 20 - 25 kts)??
 
 A working jib is nice to have, and can be sheeted to the inside tracks 
 (if Heron still has them) for better pointing. Mike Meinhold 
 demonstrated the value of a "blade" working jib (tall and slender) on 
 this year's Wild Goose Chase.
 
What size of Jib is your suggestion???
 
 We were considering to install a
removable forestay? The mast has already the attachment for it (near
the spreaders). All that would need to be done is the
mounting/installation of the hull attachment (removable and
installable) near the "DOLPHIN" Windlass.D.)
 
 Are you sure that's not the attachment for the spinnaker pole lift?
 
Well my guess was as mentioned. How could we exactly know??? 
 
 The main sail - we were
thinking to modify it for another year and see how that would work.
?!? The problem (our feeling) we always had - at around 10kts we need
the first reef. At about 15 - 20kts, we need the second reef. In most
cases, we have a lot of "WINDWARD" pressure, forcing us to open the
main sail quite a lot.
 
This sounds to me like the mainsail has quite a bit of belly. Our old 
 main was like that, and while excellent in light air, was a handful in 
 normal to heavy wind. I was amazed at the difference when we got a new 
 main.

Well, I guess that I need to believe in that (even though the sail manufacturer thought that the main sail is not in a too-bad shape).
 
 Our modification idea is as follows:Remain the
Actual Luff at 31ftModify (reduce) the Actual Foot from 14.2 5ft to
12.25ft
Having read that Carl Albergs design was apparently changed to some
extent by Kurt Hansen, we think that this modification would be
beneficial. This would reduce the size from 220sqft to about 190sqft
(reduction of 14%)??? This modification should be reasonably
inexpensive and give us another season to experience the sailing of
the A30. We also believe that it would not reduce the speed of the
A30 in any way.
 
 How much do you want to put into an old main? Are you planning to use 
 that old main for your Atlantic crossing?
 
The idea was to sail it one more season (2011) and get more experience in every aspect.
We have to decide what to do. Thanks for your suggestions.
Bruno & Elyse 		 	   		  
 1288571960.0