{"id":2213,"date":"2023-05-27T19:08:57","date_gmt":"2023-05-27T19:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=2213"},"modified":"2023-05-30T16:25:54","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T16:25:54","slug":"refit-new-sails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/refit-new-sails\/","title":{"rendered":"Refit: New sails"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Nelson took over the Victory, she was already well over 30 years old. He asked the Admiralty for a refit.
\nThe bill came to more than the ship cost to build.
\nWell, Samsara is going to be 50 years old this summer, and I got her five years ago as cheaply as you can buy any old fibreglass boat these days.
\nAlso, last year\u2019s circuit of the Canaries, the Gambia, Cape Verdes, Grenada, up to the BVIs and back to Falmouth was essentially a trial run to see what I really needed before I headed off for the long term.
\nThat\u2019s right. I shall be departing in September, and the boat, at least, will not be coming back for ten years or more. So, I needed to get her right. I needed a Big Refit.
\nI returned to Conwy in North Wales. That was where I got her, and Barry Lovell and his crew at TLC Boat Repair had done a grand job then. I gave Barry the new list. He blinked a bit.
\nI\u2019m not going to catalogue it all in this post. That would make it much too long. So let\u2019s take it a bit at a time \u2013 and start with the best bit: The sails.
\nAs regular followers of this blog will know, I have not had a good relationship with Samsara\u2019s sails over the past few years. She came with three headsails and two mainsails (not to mention working and storm jibs). Suffolk sails made me a trysail – and thank heavens they did: it was all that got me back after the mainsail disintegrated 150 miles off the Azores.
\nThen there was the headsail, which sailmakers kept telling me had \u201cplenty of life left in it\u201d \u2013 but still kept gathering patches. In the end, it gave up off the north coast of Anglesey. There didn\u2019t seem to be much point in trying to rescue it – the working jib took me the rest of the way.
\nI didn\u2019t care. I\u2019d been to the Boat Show. I\u2019d spent an hour on the Crusader stand with Paul Lees. I had become somewhat over-enthusiastic.
\nBy the time I hauled out the credit card and paid an enormous deposit, I had ordered a new headsail and main in Vectran and something called a \u201cSuper Zero\u201d, which is a massive sail made out of some sort of space-age laminate to be set on its own furler from a miniature removable bowsprit.<\/p>\n

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\nInterestingly, this would not be poking out a metre in front of the rest of the boat \u2013 that\u2019s for gennakers and the like. This just needed a point to take the tack which kept it away from the regular headsail furler.
\nI have to say it\u2019s amazing \u2013 and I can sail closer to the wind than I can with the new Vectran headsail.<\/p>\n

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\nThat\u2019s pretty good in itself \u2013 much smaller than you would expect (it stops a metre short of the masthead , high-cut so I can see under it and the clew is only just aft of the mast. This means it still sets well when rolled in a blow – but it did leave me under-canvassed in light airs (hence the Super Zero).
\nApparently Vectran sails will go on setting well because they don\u2019t stretch. All that can happen is that the stitching wears out \u2013 apparently, you have to line up the holes to sew it back together because it\u2019s so tough you can\u2019t push a needle through it.
\nI hadn\u2019t realised quite how tough until I tried to furl it \u2013 it\u2019s like handling sheet metal. Nor had I opted for full-length battens because I\u2019d always been quite happy with Samsara\u2019s short ones. Also,\u00a0 I have bitter memories of the tiny nuts falling out of Largo\u2019s long ones in the middle of a Biscay gale.<\/p>\n

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The new sail, however, brings difficulties of its own. To begin with, it took me a full ten minutes to furl the thing\u00a0 (I believe I\u2019m getting better at this). Also, I notice that Kirsten Neuschafer on Minnehaha chose short battens. Apparently, the long ones can jam if you try and reef with any wind in the sail. Anyway, if short battens are good enough for the Golden Globe winner\u2026
\nMeanwhile, you can\u2019t have a new mainsail without a new sail cover \u2013 and it would never do to have a tatty old sprayhood\u2026
\nNext, the rig\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Nelson took over the Victory, she was already well over 30 years old. He asked the Admiralty for a refit. The bill came to more than the ship cost to build. Well, Samsara is going to be 50 years old this summer, and I got her five years ago as cheaply as you can … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2235,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213\/revisions\/2235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}