Sail Material to Stay Away From...

[OceanSeaSpray]

The question is not how long have you had them, but how much have you sailed with them.

It really comes down to the use you make out of the sail. Some laminated sails, like CAL (custom axis laminate), can offer amazing performance and light weight for a very good price and if you only sail the odd local race etc, they can last many years with only the odd small repairs for normal wear.

Take them ocean cruising where they are up for weeks at a time, with a lot of UV exposure and strong winds at times, and they will start falling apart in short order. A single 3000NM passage can equate to years of local cruising or racing in many cases.

Woven cloths are much longer lasting and a well-built sail out of a top-quality cloth can perform for a long time, but it is likely to be quite heavy. My mainsail weighs over 60kg, I can pull it up to the second spreaders and then I have to winch the last 6 metres up.

By the way, there is a brilliant book about sailmaking and modern materials available as a free PDF (at the moment anyway) from its author here.

[css145hs]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

I have them close to 5 years now. The hydranet material is like new. I have a little mildew at the luff (where the control line runs through) but that's made of regular dacron tape.

cheers,
Nick.

Hey Nick, you seem to fairly active on the forums even today,

Any update many years later? Any idea how many miles you've put on them? Looking at a seawind 1190 and thinking of requesting they go with hydranet rather than the std racing laminate.

Thanks!

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by css145hs

Hey Nick, you seem to fairly active on the forums even today,



Any update many years later? Any idea how many miles you've put on them? Looking at a seawind 1190 and thinking of requesting they go with hydranet rather than the std racing laminate.



Thanks!

Due to circumstances, we have only put a couple 100 miles on them since that last update, but the sails are basically unchanged. We did wear out the mast track which may be caused by more batten pressure, so we installed an Antal track with slides. I would not buy laminates again for cruising.

[Paul Elliott]

I can vouch for the Hood Vektron fabric. It sounds similar in concept to Hydranet. My Vektron sails have stood up very well to some hard use and they do hold their shape. I put about 10,000 miles of hard sailing on my last set when I decided to get a new set. I had the old sails re-stitched where needed and these became my spares. The old sails still look great and the fabric isn't showing any serious degradation.

[Kestrahl]

Originally Posted by Paul Elliott

I can vouch for the Hood Vektron fabric. It sounds similar in concept to Hydranet. My Vektron sails have stood up very well to some hard use and they do hold their shape. I put about 10,000 miles of hard sailing on my last set when I decided to get a new set. I had the old sails re-stitched where needed and these became my spares. The old sails still look great and the fabric isn't showing any serious degradation.

That is wonderful except hood sailcloth no longer exists and Vektron is now made by Challenge. Hood dacron lasted exceptionally well also. Vektron isn't really comparable with Hydra-net, their is so little vectran in it, it only has slightly lower stretch than normal dacron. Hydra-net has a decent percentage of dyneema and costs at least double.