I've got a teared up spinnaker and I wonder if I can use it to make a sail for my mini out of it. Any advise is welcome. Plans also ;-)

dirk

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dirkski said..
I've got a teared up spinnaker and I wonder if I can use it to make a sail for my mini out of it. Any advise is welcome. Plans also ;-)

dirk

Nup...... use it as a sunshade at the sailing site.

Basically spinnakers are light wind sails, land yachts sail with wind speeds around hurricane force, no water yacht has 60-80km/h winds forced onto their sails...land yachts do.

Gizmo, you are right, but kites made for kite buggy racing are also made of the same fabric. And buggies go that fast, and even faster (up to 125,.. km/h).
And water yachts have more friction cause they have to go through the water and don't ride on wheels with bearings.
So?

Be the first, try it, take lots of pictures so we can all learn.

I will. Now looking for a good plan to start from.

Spinnakers are generally made from nylon or similar stretchy material and don't have the shape holding requirements of land yacht sails
Landyachts due to their speed are generally driving to windward from the perspective of the sail Spinnakers on the other hand are more off the wind sails as are kite buggy sails

Parachutes vs Wings. Not to say you shouldn't try it though

I'll give it a try!
Some pictures of my gentle assistants: the Pfaff with double transport for stitching the ripstop spinnaker and the Durkopp for all the rest.







A whole lot of ripstop spinnaker. I'm going to cut the panels out of it.

An old dacron sail, which I'll use for the mastpocket and to strengthen the corners of my sail.



A CAD-plan of the sail. The blue lines are the battens. I didn't made it full battened after looking at other sails. Think that in this way, my sail will come over more easy after a gibe than a full battened one. Mast rake is 10°.
Many thanks again to Paul for his thread "how to recut ..." and his clear explanation and drawnings.
Any suggestion or Idea from your side is more than welcome. Shoot ...
dirk

all looking great .the material will be light so consider using it for a light wind sail, ie go big. spinnaker is just a light grade of the same dacron sailcloth

Cleaned up the sails (read: cut out the panels and throw away the crap)

Next, I've cut the 5 panels, with 10° mastrake, 3cm seam allowance on the mastside and at the top and the bottom of each pannel

Pinned pannel 1 and 2 together,

stitched them together,

finished the seam with 2 lovely zigzags.


Did this 4 times and then cut out the back, bottom and top of the sail with 1,5cm seam allowance. This is the result.


Next thins to do will be making a mast sleeve, pockets for the battens, reïnforcement of the corners and the finishing of the top, back and bottom of the sail.
Now: let your very appreciated comments go!

Greatings and a happy, windy newyear to you all,
dirk

i will be interested to see what kind of final shape you get inside the sail, keep going your workmanship is excellent

Thank you very much Paul. If you mean by shape the curvature of the luff-side: I'll keep the main part of the sail straight and add the curvature to the mast sleeve. Or: how can I make it difficult?
Today ad some reïnforcements to the corners and the back of the sail.

Making a 7mm seam around the sail


Adding reïnforcements and finishing




How to make the corners stronger: by 4 layers of dacron sailcloth





The top corner finished: both sides


Thanks to a rainy day.
Next step will be the mast sleeve.

Sail with the mastpocket added

A piece of safety belt to make the endstop of the batten sleeve

A view on the inside of the sleeve


part one of the batten tensioners stitched on the sleeve


part two stitched on the sail


batten sleeve finished and stitched on the sail


making of a vario masttop with two pieces of reused sling


the masttop


The sail on my yacht. Sorry, forgotten to rotate.


Some wrinkles at the top batten, which are fixed by now.


As this sail is higher than my recut windsurfsail, my mast was to short. Lucky for me that I had another masttop in my garage which fitted rather good. So that problem is solved. First test was in very soft wind (max 4m/s,which was not enough). Second test was in very strong wind (5 - 6 bft, which was way to much). I thought I was sailing with a hot air balloon on a mast. So, this will be a soft wind sail and I go on testing. In case it don't work at all: I've learned a lot about sailmaking.

You'll be taking orders for new sails soon!

Thanks TP1! But not for the moment, there has to be some time left for sailing, windsurfing, kitebuggiing, reading, thinking about modification of the shizzle. Oops, I forget working and my wife's ideas on spending time off. Later on I'll plan to make a heavy wind sail. Something like a 3.5 sqm.