Questions About Buying New Main

[silversailor]

I'm shopping for a new main for my 2006 Hanse 370. While she is a cruising boat, I do weekly Club races and several long distance (65nm+) races each season (where we generally do very well). So I want a performance main that I can also use cruising. Suggestions are all over the board and much depends on relying on the sailmaker. So I would appreciate your experience with any of the following sailmakers: FX, Hyde, Dimension, Dieball, Ullman or Somerset. Also, your experience with any of the following fabrics: CPX, PEN-X, GPL Carbon, Dimension DX, or DCX.

Thanks all.

[islandplanet]

As a sailmaker, I'm not particularly keen on Pentex for an application like yours. If the boat is being cruised and club raced, you likely won't need anything too exotic like carbon. If the main is being left on the boom under a cover when not in use, I'd want something with a double taffeta. The first option I'd present to you would be Custom Axis Laminate (CAL) in Vectran. Vectran is an excellent and in my opinion underrated fiber. It has excellent physical properties and since it comes in a flat orientation it's ideal for laminating. CAL is a medium tech load path sail ideal for performance cruising. The next step up would be a higher tech load path technology called MXL. It's available with a wide variety of fibers. We've done MXL for performance cruisers in a carbon-technora blend and we had one customer with an F-31 opt for Vectran with a core taffeta.

Drop me a PM or email if you like.