best asymetric sails for cruising

[ruby tuesday]

cuben fibre is one step down from PBO which lasts maybe one or two events. the costs are the biggest hurdlke for most sailing teams.

my sources are (1) first hand by watching it being used (2) talking to the people that make the sails. the guys that make them say - they're fine and stable straight out of the bag but after being used they lose their shape pretty quickly and need re-cutting and the laminated structure does come apart fairly quickly - i saw this first hand when i saw steve a few days back with a CF number 1 headsail that was on the benches belonging to a corby 36 --- not sure how old it was but it looked pretty new to me.

steve races all the time and even he only goes for carbon / kevlar sails on his boat. the guys from the sail lofts are out on the tracks week in week out and there's plenty of discussion going on.

the general consensus regarding cuben fibre is that it is fine if you can throw enough money at it cos you're gunna be replacing them all the time and they're not cheap either.

kite wise its contender polycotton all the way - even the big boys go polycotton.

my biggest expense every year is fully battened headsails (numbers 1 and 2) and mainsails.

[ruby tuesday]

i'm in and out the sail lofts on regular basis myself cos my kevlar headsails are great first up then after about 2 events you can physically see the deformation in them - the laminate gets stretched and then instead of sitting flat it forms it's own ridges in it and then after about 4 events the glues are shot and thats it game over get a new sail.

CF has the added complication in that its far lighter than a kevlar but also more unstable with it. and its not so much to do with the actual fibres breaking down or the strength of those fibres but the glues that hold the sails together - a carbon or kevlar sail has its own glue formula cos carbon nad kevlar have been around heck of a lot longer. thinking that in maybe 5 or 10years time when the glue technology has caught up with the level of materials technology then things might change and we'll all be using them.

delamination is a result of the glue failing not the material breaking.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by ruby tuesday

cuben fibre is one step down from PBO which lasts maybe one or two events. the costs are the biggest hurdlke for most sailing teams.

my sources are (1) first hand by watching it being used (2) talking to the people that make the sails. the guys that make them say - they're fine and stable straight out of the bag but after being used they lose their shape pretty quickly and need re-cutting and the laminated structure does come apart fairly quickly - i saw this first hand when i saw steve a few days back with a CF number 1 headsail that was on the benches belonging to a corby 36 --- not sure how old it was but it looked pretty new to me.

steve races all the time and even he only goes for carbon / kevlar sails on his boat. the guys from the sail lofts are out on the tracks week in week out and there's plenty of discussion going on.

the general consensus regarding cuben fibre is that it is fine if you can throw enough money at it cos you're gunna be replacing them all the time and they're not cheap either.

kite wise its contender polycotton all the way - even the big boys go polycotton.

my biggest expense every year is fully battened headsails (numbers 1 and 2) and mainsails.

I am surprised Cuben technology deteriorated this much between last time I had a Cuben sail in hand and today.

I did some web search and failed to find any proof of Cuben fiber being a poor choice for Zero like sails (I am not all that good at finding things on the web to start with). And in the magazines I can see Cuben sails from VOR boats to newest Oysters, hence I got that apparently wrong impression of how good Cuben really is.

Can you possibly guide us to the right forum, to any Internet sources, images, etc?

I am glad you warned us as otherwise I could have gone for a Cuben sail myself the day I win lotto ;-)

Cheers,
b.

[Jon Eisberg]

Originally Posted by hoppy

I hate the motoring and try to avoid it when I can.

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you were one of those...

;-)

[hoppy]

Originally Posted by Jon Eisberg

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you were one of those...

;-)

They're Norwegian, they can get away with having so much fuel

[ruby tuesday]

like i said its not the actual fibres but the glues used to hold it all together in laminated form.

the glues just haven't got anywhere near being useful for anything more than short term racetrack orientated solutions.

in testing and i was on steve's boat at the end of last year testing a new glue compound and it was clear after 4 days that the problem wasn't the material it was the glue.

the material thats used is fine - the weave on its own is fine but for it to work as intended it has to be laid up in laminated form. the reason why most of us race track boys n girls are not choosing it for kites is cos of the amount of abuse that a kite gets - it's far far bigger than a number 1 headsail and takes far more punishment than a mainsail but under testing conditions there were problems with the glue becoming "unstuck".

Cuben Fibre was designed to be an ultra lightweight sail capable of going long distances over short periods of time. remember this nearly every VOR boat swaps a full suit of sails out at every stopover -- so that sail might only have covered a few hundred miles but it gets swapped out cos its tukd -- add into the mix that a VOR project will be running a budjet of many millions of pounds which means that they can afford it - us guys on the other hand have a budget of maybe £6k per year for sails -- so for that means i can have headsails and i get a mainsail every 18months or so.

CF is the next generation PBO and that didnt catch on cos of similar issues - the glue used in the PBO sails reacted with the UV and caused it to fail a lot quicker -- the glue used in cuben fibre sail production is a different mix to the stuff used in PBO but its still unstable -- until someone gets a mix thats stable and can be used time and again like they do with carbon and kevlar then its pretty much upto the Sheiks to make it happen.

in cruising terms of kites stick to what everyone has been using for years and works and costs a lot less if like me you're looking at over 100sqm for a kite then stay away from laminates for a few more years until you see the IRC racetrack boys n girls using them --- the IRC guys are your average club sailors with extremely limited budgets and might only buy headsails and mainsails and like me they'll get kites and other sails repaired