Greetings-
Recently I raced my soling one meter. IT has some wrinkles in the Main sail at the clew. I didn’t do that well in the racing but for other reasons. I’m curious if anyone has had similar issues with the mainsail that comes with the Victor Kit and if there is a way to fix this without buying a new suit of sails (save $). My wrinkles were caused two months ago when carrying the boat rigged past a tall building in Boston on a windy day. Big jet engine blast coming through an underpass. I’ve tried adding corner patches on another boat and they always fell off or didn’t help much.
any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
thanks,
John Storrow
John - please post a pic or two so we can see and understand. It will help to provide suggestions…unless they are “creases” instead of “wrinkles”. If you got some “hard folds” in Mylar, you may be out of luck, although I think the Victor Soling uses a very light weight Dacron (or they used to) which shouldn’t carry a fold, unless it was beent in place for some time.
Thanks, Dick
Dick-
here’s a pic showing how there’s a rather noticeable wrinkle that goes from the clew up along the leech (trailing edge). I noticed it quite a bit when I was racing and comparing to other boats which may have had “Spider sails”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77543416@N06/8004815463/in/photostream
thanks
John
Thanks for the pic John, that is very helpful.
At first look I thought you just had the clew too tight, but the curve in the foot of the sail shows that such is not the case.
You indicated that the damage had occurred while carrying the boat (rigged) and being caught by a gust of wind. If the boat had bee on the water, it would have heeled over - when carrying the boat it is a natural reaction to try and hold on to it.
It looks to me like the sail material may actually have stretched. Adding larger corner patches will not help in my opinion.
I doubt that the wrinkles will have much effect on the performance, so it is probably a cosmetic issue rather than a functional issue.
Depending on the sail material, you may be able to improve the look of it by ironing it with a very cool iron, but this is risky at best. Do not iron the corner patch, just the sail material…
In my opinion you have three choices:
- Buy some new sails
- Ignore it
- Make yourself a suit of sails - it is not as hard as you might think…
Finally, when transporting the boat:
Consider carrying the boat unrigged and rigging at the pond. This gets easier with practice.
When carrying the boat while it is rigged, make sure it is sheeted well out. That way the sails flap around but it does not catch the wind so much.
Carry it with the bow toward the wind (not easy in a built up area!)
If there is room to do so, try carrying it bow up with the mast out in front of you (sheets well out) - this is the most controllable position I have found.
Carry the boat by the keel fin only.
Just my two cents worth, hope this helps…
John I will echo Mr P’s thoughts.
The soling sails are very easyto make since they are a single panel. and one yard of dacron @ 20 bucks and a sewing machine will solve the problem. I have ironed my soling sails(homemade) with a iron are the coolest setting to get out some creases from handling. but since yours are stretched this wont help much…unless you get lucky and the heat shrinks the fibers a bit…
Thanks all-
Making new sails is a good Idea
Good to know Ironing it might not help much.
happy sailing!
John,
Do a google search sail wrinkles clew
There are a lot of sites that talk about variouus wrinkles and their causes. Here is a very good one that topped the list
https://www.quantumsails.com/Downloads/CruisingSupport/QSDG_Mainsailtrimguide_Flynn.pdf
I think it said your problem is probably too much mast bend/too much backstay. On shore you can see what causes the various wrinkles by (alternately and together/messing with) tensioning backstay and vang and outhaul and maybe bending the mast by hand fore/aft and sideways for mid mast sag. It is enlitening to me to see how things like less outhaul and more twist will make wrinkles diminish or go away. Excess outhaul or twist is not always the answer to not having wrinkles but proper amount can be the answer. It is interesting to see it all anyway. It is interesting also to see the part that mast side bend can play in causing wrinkles. I may be getting carried away, but this has been my experience with an EC-12.