Extending the Life of Your Cruising Sails

By Dave & Marcia Miller, North Sails, Richmond, BC

Cruising sails are built to perform for many years and many miles of service when given reasonable care. However, things don’t always go as they should, and it only takes a few minutes to do serious damage to any sail.

Sails have some obvious enemies like chafe, fatigue, ultra-violet and overloading. Here are some preventative maintenance tips to help your sails last longer.

1. Check the sails annually, or more often if you’ve had an “event”. Look for areas of chafe, beginning with seams where stitching stands up above the surface. Seams should be re-sewn where multiple stitches are broken and small holes repaired before they turn into major rips in heavy airs.

2. Take precautions against chafe. Most abrasion is caused by sharp objects on board so it makes sense to “pad” these with tape or leather. The usual culprits are:

• Spreader tips • Hooks on wire halyards • Cotter pins on turnbuckles • Stanchions and lifelines • Lights and other hardware on the mast • Deck hardware

• Hatch openings and insides of sail lockers

3. Have your sailmaker place chafe patches on sails where spreaders, stanchions and anything else might rub frequently. Even smooth objects can wear out the sail material over time.

4. Keep sails clean. Synthetic sailcloth is largely impervious to most dirt but stained and dingy sails look old before their time. The perception of age can be almost as damaging as actual decrepitude. Remember, too, that dirt is the starting point for mildew growth.

Environmental effects:

The effects of ultra-violet radiation (UV) are relentless, insidious and irreversible. The rate of degradation depends on the material, location, and

length of exposure. The differences can be dramatic. Sails that would be destroyed by several months of tropical sunshine might go years with little apparent UV damage in the weaker sunlight and shorter seasons further from the equator - but it’s best not to take chances.

Most boats spend relatively little time actually under sail and more UV damage is sustained while sails are rolled or furled. They need to be protected from direct sun by appropriate covers like a full boom cover for the main and a sewn-on leech and foot cover for a roller- furling sail. Make sure that the UV cover is on the outside protecting a sail when it’s furled up. Every year people bring sails in with leeches rotting from being furled inside out.

Sail trim effects:

Besides improving performance (whether that’s a priority of yours or not) properly adjusted sail trim can extend the useful life of your sails.

(a) Proper headsail leads. If the sheet lead is too far aft, no amount of leechcord will keep the leech from fluttering. Prolonged fluttering will stretch the sail out of shape and eventually lead to failure.

If the lead

is too far forward, the main will tend to backwind and luff.

If you have

the lead in the correct location when going upwind, the headsail will trim in approximately parallel to the upper shroud. As a general rule, when the foot of the sail is just touching the bottom of the upper shroud the body of the sail should be two inches to four inches away from the spreader tip.

(b) Leechcord. The purpose of a leechcord is to keep the back of the sail from fluttering or “motorboating”. High frequency fluttering fatigues the back end of the sail and can lead to a major failure. Most leechcords are made with relatively easy tension control, since the correct adjustment usually varies with wind velocity and angle of sail. The perfect adjustment is just tight enough to stop flutter. Re- adjust the genoa leechline each time

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you go out. If you’ve had it tensioned for heavy winds and you don’t release it for the lighter winds, the leech will tend to develop a permanent curl.

(c) Halyard Tension/Furling Genoas. If you’ve tightened the halyard on a roller-furler while sailing, don’t forget to ease it off before putting the boat away. Over time, too much tension can deform the sail.

(d) Halyard Tension/Mains. While sailing upwind, increasing luff tension by pulling up the halyard isn’t really bad for the sail but it can break halyards. A much easier way is by pulling down with a cunningham, which is a line or tackle attached to a ring placed about one foot above the sail’s tack. (Don’t forget to release the cunningham again when sailing downwind.)

(e) Battens. If the sail is meant to have battens, use them. The sail will last longer, too. A flopping leach is even worse than sailing around with the fenders still dangling.

(f) Partially rolled sails. If you intend to roll up a sail part way as the wind increases, make sure the material is strong enough for the heavier conditions and think about having reinforcements installed on leech and foot to prevent local distortion. (Talk to your sailmaker.)

(g) Topping lifts, lazy jacks and slack reef lines that are allowed to slap repeatedly against the sail can, over time, chafe the stitching out of seams. They should be adjusted to stop the slapping. You might consider replacing the topping lift with a solid boom vang. ◊

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