Hey all,

After a bit of advice to see if anyone has done this before but also a good bit of info!!

I brought a great condition 2nd hand main for my Etchells. It is beautiful and crisp and looks fantastic on the ground, however....
When I hoisted it I found it had heaps of extra sail cloth up the luff. It meant to get the luff creases out and get the draft anywhere near where it should be I had to pull massive amounts of cunningham on.
Now I thought it was because I wasn't getting enough mast bend, even though I was pulling a bucket load of backstay on (the backstay has a 12:1 purchase) I would get a nice tight forestay but still the main had terrible bags up the luff.

I have played with lots of stuff then I was googling last night and found that over time the dacron sail stretches and the 3-strand poly bolt rope shrinks. As the bolt rope is sewn top and bottom the stretch and shrinking causes all the sail to bunch up.

My plan this weekend is to unpick the bolt rope at the tack, hoist the main and then pull down the cunningham so the bolt rope disappears up the sail, then drop the sail and re-sew the bolt rope.
After some research i found this is a common thing and can also be done on older dacron headsails with hanks and a boltrope that seem to need a tonne of halyard to get the scallops out between the hanks.

Will take before and after pics and post them later!!!

Thanks for that Rumblefish

You allowed near the boat?

We have a time share arrangement, work out how much time she gets to spend with her horse, and I get a small share of that!!!!

Morning

We have done it for several sails .... re-phrase that, youngest does it (I just become the unpaid labour) as he is the sailmaker.

Before you do it tho' .... how much excess boltrope do you have out at the bottom ?? difficult to get back if it escapes up into the sail pocket. Sometimes easier to replace the entire boltrope leave a bucket load of tail at the bottom and then stretch it out.

We replaced a few of them as the particular rope they were using for the boltrope was shrinking, job is a bit of a pain but achievable. Big strong stitches to re-secure it afterwards

Easy way to check if it has shrunk, measure the luff length and compare to the class rules.

Select to expand quote

dkd said..

Morning

We have done it for several sails .... re-phrase that, youngest does it (I just become the unpaid labour) as he is the sailmaker.

Before you do it tho' .... how much excess boltrope do you have out at the bottom ?? difficult to get back if it escapes up into the sail pocket. Sometimes easier to replace the entire boltrope leave a bucket load of tail at the bottom and then stretch it out.

We replaced a few of them as the particular rope they were using for the boltrope was shrinking, job is a bit of a pain but achievable. Big strong stitches to re-secure it afterwards

Easy way to check if it has shrunk, measure the luff length and compare to the class rules.

Interesting you say that. I though my main was a 'bit odd' as at full hoist the tack ring sits about 600mm above the goose neck!!! I have to pull soooo much cunningham to get the luff reasonably tight, about 400mm actually!!!

The main has about 150mm of extra bolt rope sticking out the bottom.

The mast has a opening to feed the main up about 600mm above the goose neck and then it has track below that so currently you pull the main all the way up, then feed it back down the bottom track.
So as long as there is some bolt rope in the sail in the bottom section of track it will hold fine.

Rumble, definitely hand sew 2 feet of the same diameter rope to the end of the boltrope. Nothing wrong with releasing the tension but you'll want the boltrope the whole way along the luff tape on an Etchells. Once the ripe has gone up inside the luff tape, hot knife off the excess rope with a 6" tail again and bob's your uncle.

Jethrow

Hi all,

Well this is a pic of what it looked like before with no cunningham, unfortunately didn't get a pic after as the breeze picked up and I wanted to get the main down.

Unpicked the stitching at the bottom, sewed on a new piece of bolt rope, hoisted the main to full hoist and pulled the cunningham on and off about 20 times and about 250mm of bolt rope slid up inside the main!!!

The main now looks like it should and I can get vertical over stretched creases from too much cunninham which I could never get before!!!