Issue with Mainsail project, please read and weigh in.

[Craig]

Mac, With the position of the Sobstad logo it appears that the luff is to the right and up and that the foot is to the left at the bottom. Is that correct? In other words the tack clew is in the lower right.

[MacGyver]

Everyone, I greatly appreciate the input.

I sent the picture (which by the way, I edited in photobucket which I had no clue you could do, and added words to help with orientation) and emailed Jeff Frank at Sailrite. Within an hour he had responded and said the sail is within spec for the boat, and sail I should continue and follow the bolt rope tightening procedure. I had also emailed a few questions about that as well.

With that answer,  I continued. I finished the Luff and Foot after work, and will be installing the hardware next.

A victory beer, and I am writing this.

It is my plan to see what the sail does and how it works with the bimini. My opinion is solidly based on all the responses here. I have a lot of knowledge with working on boats, but as far as sails go, I had none until now.

A few remarks, I must say this sail will be built way better than the 2 professional sails I have sitting in the shop with the new one. The patches look better, the procedures are better, the quality is far better. Really, I am surprised how nice this kit is. Now I just need to finish it and use it a few times to get to know it.

I have made a few mistakes, but after looking over the old sails with my new found sight into sails, I found errors they had as well, and with how over built this sail is in comparison, I am not worried one bit about its build quality.....

I will keep you all informed of the progress and the fitment. Performance and all that will be in the future, or possibly after the winners circle at CLR.

Mac

[MacGyver]

So I tried the mainsail today, and it didn't go as nicely as I thought it would.
The batten mast track slides are different from the rest of the sail slides. They are beefier, and also ended up causing issues. The sail went up hard, which I found out was because of these slides. I figured it our when removing the sail, as it wouldn't just drop down, it stayed up!!

So there I stood, contemplating what to do..... I lowered the downhaul cleat and attempted to put the bimini up, and that went pretty rough as well. It hits the bimini from what I can tell.... so, I started to jack around with it all trying different things and such, with no real luck, but did come up with a plan.

I dissassembled the boat and brought it home. I am going to add a flag halyard while it is here.

I will change the topping lift and add a clip on type of my own design. I know that this will be a extra step in sailing for my wife and I, but With the lazy jacks, it wont be a horrible deal if it is forgotten. On that topping lift I will have a few settings, this way I can do a few options. One will be at dock, bimini up. Another will be at dock, no bimini, and Lastly, a sailing connection.

If we dont have it connected for sailing, I will make a small connection to keep it out of the way when we sail.

I found that the top roach will hit the backstay and probably with the batten will hit also. It is my hope to adjust the height to accomodate this and perhaps it wont be a issue when sailing....... fingers crossed. I couldnt really belly the sail to see if that helped...

I modded the slides to work better. They showed no issue near the mast slot cutout to insert them, but about 1.5 feet up they got tight. I will try them and mod more if needed once the sail is back on.

I moved my downhaul cleat down some and that will allow me to lower the boom some.

We talked about cutting the last inch off the bimini, but we decided against that for now......

Worst case scenario, I will have to cut down the sail this winter.

Thanks to everyone for weighing in on this. I will reinform what happens when we try it again in the next few days.

Mac

[GretchenG]

Aww, Mac, I'm so sorry you're having fit problems after all your work on that sail!  It sounds like you have some good ideas for alterations, so I hope you get it worked out okay.  Thanks for keeping us posted--  Gretcheng