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I am in the process of learning the sail making trade .. and have some thoughts on this subject. If your boat is an absolute factory production model, with NO modifications to the rig whatsoever ... it may be possible to get decent sails made over the phone, or the internet. Most major manufactures rely on a database of the exact factory specs for such situations. However, if you have made ANY modifications, such as going from a hanked on foresail, to roller furler ... you want them to measure the boat.
As for the quality of sailcloth, it would be in your best interest to specify exactly what cloth you want. For example, I offer my customers a wide variety of choices between Bainbrige Int. & Challenge Sailcloth. If they are qualified at all, they should be able to point out what you are ... and are not getting for your money. One of the things that I discuss (and offer my customers) is different widths of sailcloth. For example, on my own boat, I used Bainbridge's Ocean 650 cloth, which comes in a 54" width ... but I had them "slit" the width down to 38". This increased the wastage of cloth, and the amount of time spent sewing, as I went from 8 panels to 10 ... so why would anybody do such a thing? The more panels the more draft control ... simple as that.
I would also ask to see the computer drawing of the sail before they start cutting cloth. Hard as it may be to believe in this day & age, some sailmakers rely on "eyeball engineering" ... completely unacceptable from my viewpoint.
Lastly, laminates VS Dacron ... making my own sails, I sweated that one for a looong time. My own boat is rather ... uh ... unique ... anybody out there know of another fin keeled boat with a cutter rig? From the waterline up, she's all blue water cruiser, underneath she's all PHRF racer. The high aspect ratio rig & fin keel asked for laminate sails, the traditional appearance & my inteneded cruising usage suggested Dacron ... AND modern laminates can last 5-7 years ... even in the Caribbean .. an acceptable lifespan in my book. I finally decided on Dacron, because of the cost factor ... if intended to race the boat (I don't) I probably would have gone with laminate sails ... for my money, I couldn't justify the added expense ... I could however justify the expense of slitting the cloth I used!
L S/V Eva Luna
Bob
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