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Dick,
I’m not sure a hem will help this problem.
2 oz. dacron seems like pretty heavy material for a one meter boat. My fairwind is a bit less than a meter and I use 1.0 oz trispi. Even that seems like it is pretty bulletproof. I have not worked much with dacron in smaller sail sizes. But my experience with dacron in full sized boats is that it is pretty crisp when new and will stretch over time under load. All of whish seem like it would not be a very good sail cloth for these small boats…
How do you store your sails. If you store your sail on the spar, and you keep too much tension in your sails, that can cause leech curl. Make sure you store your sails with the minimum tensions possible. If you store them on the spars, make sure that you losten your vang. Even the weight of the boom can be a problem.
I like to store my sails on the spars with the mast set-up on the boat ready to sail and the boat sitting in its cradle in my basement. I place a boom crutch under my main boom and add enough tension to the jim boom topping lift to relieve any tension in the leech. This should prevent any curling…
If the sail is old, it may be beyond repair. It may have stretched already and you will not be able to “unstretch” it. does your sail have seams? If it does, you could try to have it re-sewn to try and re-tighten the mid section and soften the leech a bit. Otherwise, if the class allows it, you could try adding some smaller secondary battens in between primary battens. The secondary battens need only be 1/4 to 1/3 the length of the primary battens to be effective.
Beyond that, I would say it might be time for a new sail…
- Will
Will Gorgen
Dick,
Keep in mind that Dacron is a cloth whereas many other sail making materials are film. A cloth will shear along the warp. So if it is under load (even a relatively small load) for a long period of time, you can get some creep shearing.
Film materials like mylar and kapton are much more stable. This is good and bad. It is good in that the sail shape will not change over time. It is bad in that any hard spots in the sail will be there forever. This is less of a prblem with our small sails, believe it or not. I think it has to do with the number of pannels in a full sized sail and how much sewing goes into them…
I’m glad the hem worked for you. The drag should be negligable. The flow will be completely turbulent by the time it reaches the trailing edge, so a “trip” will not be a problem…
- will
Will Gorgen