A couple years ago I was thinking about getting a sewing machine to service my sails, having worked in sail lofts briefly over the years I figured I could do it. I choose instead to reach out to a local sail loft that I hoped would let me help them set up their new to them CNC cloth cutter. I have been helping them a handful of hours a month since then and the whole time dreaming of building some windsurfing sails. I took a while to get all the materials on hand. The biggest challenge was the mast sleeve material, it is not available in the States and not available in small quantities. Many thanks to Douglas Van Zandt of Hurricane Sails in the Gorge! He was the only one willing to sell me cloth!
I drew the design in 2D CAD and cut all the parts with the CNC machine. The outline and batten layout are based on the Severn foil freaks with subtle changes to the luff curve to suit my constant curve mast. While I have less luff curve particularly down low, I know I have more broad seam shaping in the bottom two seams, so the lower two battens have profile even when deflated. The combined effect makes for the lightest batten rotation I have ever felt while still offering good light air power. The flip side is a sail that will be harder to duck to windward and it doesn't have the mega bounce when pumped. It is more stable than my freestyle sail this is replacing, and I am thrilled it turned out good enough to be useful. I thought after I completed this sail, I would have a much better grasp on sail design and while I do I realize I am just scratching the surface. Designing even these simple sails is way more complicated than I realized! I am literally drinking from the fire hose!

So it's 5.2 with a 446 luff and 156 boom. The cloth is Dimension Tyra Ply which is filmless carbon laminate, carbon threads glued to carbon threads. It's very light, stiff and very damage tolerant. I call it stock 3DI on a roll. The only con is the price which is like five times as much as most mono and film laminates used in windsurf sails. When I asked our Dimensions rep for samples for some personal windsurfing sails, he was super kind and sent me leftover prototype material that he could not sell. Actually, there is another con that all carbon sails have, Black is hard to see on the water. I have a plan to add more orange insignia to the head to increase viz, white paint markers show up great as well, and paint sticks to it really well. Now that I know the sail works well, I have the energy to increase the viz and make it look cooler. I may add a tack fairing to hide the downhaul line and streamline the flow at the tack. I don't really need one because my homebrew boards all have full eva around the mast base and I have innegra in the board laminate, so both the sail and board are protected.

I gotta say, I love building boards but sailmaking is even better! Clean, quiet, temperature-controlled work! I still have materials for a couple more, I'm gonna ride this one like I stole it for a while to learn all I can before I start the next one.

Thank You's in no particular order...
Sailing Inc / Evolutions sails Charleston South Carolina for the interesting part time work and access to the most amazing tools!
Greg Fisher and Matt Smith at the above loft for trusting me with the tools and sharing your sailmaking knowledge.
Zack Clayton at Dimensions for the Tyra Ply! Truly revolutionary material!
Douglas Van Zandt at Hurricane sails for the mast sleeve and for fielding rookie questions.
David Ezzy for fielding rookie questions.
Rob@pro-sew.co.uk for fielding rookie questions.
Mac Barnhart at Charleston Ocean Athletes for the drone footage.
The universe for all my blessings!



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Super nice project!!!

Super cool, thank you for sharing. Sail design seems extremely deep, especially when you get into dynamic effects.

That looks great very cool to see that you were inspired to make your own. I remember back in the late 80s when I first started a guy would show up at our local with sails he made for himself always wondered how hard and how long it took.

Well done, I am surprised more people aren't interested in making their own sails. I have helped a few people do just that.

yes mast sleeve material is hard to source outside of China. You can use acrylic used for boat covers etc but it tends to be a bit heavy.

If people are interested in making their own sail I would advise them to guy/get some old maybe ripped sail and take it apart to see what makes up the reinforcements etc and if nothing else it is often the cheapest way to get a set of battens which don't degrade in the sun unlike the rest of the sail.

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Sailrepair said..
Well done, I am surprised more people aren't interested in making their own sails. I have helped a few people do just that.

yes mast sleeve material is hard to source outside of China. You can use acrylic used for boat covers etc but it tends to be a bit heavy.

If people are interested in making their own sail I would advise them to guy/get some old maybe ripped sail and take it apart to see what makes up the reinforcements etc and if nothing else it is often the cheapest way to get a set of battens which don't degrade in the sun unlike the rest of the sail.

I took his advice (thanks again mate!) and did just that. I took apart 5 sails from my dead sail pile getting battens, tensioners, downhaul pulleys all the while making drawings and notes of construction details and broad seam amounts. I also photoscaned (polycam app on phone) and measured every sail I have in addition to using marketing images of the new sails I was interested in. I created a great big database in CAD that I could compare my design to. It was a long tedious process that I did over a couple years whenever I had free time but couldn't foil. It was this approach coupled with good advice from the pro's and a lot of luck that got me something usable on my first try. I simplified everything as much as I could, choosing details that were easy to build with the materials I had just to make sure I would finish without bogging down. I also gave myself permission to suck, if something was sound but ugly I just kept moving. That was hard to do because we have really high standards in the loft and I can be OCD but it is how I got to the finish line without getting overwhelmed. Once I was satisfied with the design and had all the supplies it took me about 30 hours working on the weekends over a 2-month period to build it. Now to refine things I really have to learn a lot more about the subtleties of design so I can visualize the result and know what to do to get it but that's the fun stuff, so I am looking forward to it. I have had the itch to design and build sails since I was a puppy, but I was more interested in drawing boats back then and life led me another way, this project has really scratched that itch. Windsurfing is great that way, the projects are achievable when compared to building something like a cruising sailboat.

Love the colorway! Well done.

Amazing all round!

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utcminusfour said..
Black is hard to see on the water. I have a plan to add more orange insignia to the head to increase viz, white paint markers show up great as well, and paint sticks to it really well

Great project, thanks for sharing.
FWIW - after sailing in all conditions with Simon and his black North sails for the past 3 years, they aren't as difficult to see as you might think.
I don't think it's an issue