Sail Advice Needed Urgently

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Anyone offer any wisdom?

Why deal with someone who has ripped you off?

[accomplice]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

... to pay for the new set of sails, which will cost more than $50,000, apparently.

Why so expensive?

A good suit of new sails for my cutter rigged Tayana 58 is $13k-$18k in the US. Are european sails that much more expensive?

[poiu]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Yes, well, I was crazy about cars in my misspent youth. I have had an early 911S in my garage for most of my life since finishing college. Drove my first one all through law school (a 1971 2.2 liter 911S sunroof coupe). Drove another one all over Europe (an absolutely mint 2.2 liter 911S couple with 5,000km on it when I bought it). They are wonderful, exciting cars with an incomparable tactile feel and hair-raising sound.

However . . . they were never expensive collectors' items in those days. They were realistic cars for driving every day. At the time they were half the price of a Ferrari 308 (now they are worth 4x more). In the last couple of years, however, the prices have gone through the roof, with some of them going for $200k plus, which is just silly money, as far as I'm concerned. Nowadays, I care a lot more about sailing than about cars, maybe 100x more, and can't justify having that much equity tied up in a car. It's hard to sell a car you've loved and owned for 25+ years, but it's just time to cash in the chips. At this stage in my life, the sails are a lot more important.

Cash in on the Porsche. It's got to be a bubble price. Get a 10 year old one for buttons. You won't make a tax free profit like that ever again unless you are a genius.

Also try Sanders in Lymington. Ask for the carbon vectran laminate. I like mine. It won't cost you as much as you think. Quite quick delivery too. Mine were made in 6 weeks.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by accomplice

Why so expensive?

A good suit of new sails for my cutter rigged Tayana 58 is $13k-$18k in the US. Are european sails that much more expensive?

$50k (25k pounds plus VAT) is for high end laminate sails -- North 3DL and Doyle Vectran. Of course I hope that in the end I will pay less than that.

I guess a set of Dacron sails for my boat would be half that or $25k, which would be about the right difference to a U.S. price of $18k after adding 20% VAT and a bit of extra margin.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by poiu

Cash in on the Porsche. It's got to be a bubble price. Get a 10 year old one for buttons. You won't make a tax free profit like that ever again unless you are a genius.

Also try Sanders in Lymington. Ask for the carbon vectran laminate. I like mine. It won't cost you as much as you think. Quite quick delivery too. Mine were made in 6 weeks.

Thanks; good advice.

Can you tell something about your sails? And how much did they cost?

[accomplice]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

$50k (25k pounds plus VAT) is for high end laminate sails -- North 3DL and Doyle Vectran. Of course I hope that in the end I will pay less than that.

I guess a set of Dacron sails for my boat would be half that or $25k, which would be about the right difference to a U.S. price of $18k after adding 20% VAT and a bit of extra margin.

Reminds me of an old friend who had a Baltic 52 which he raced and equipped with expensive laminate sails. He was talking to another friend of ours who had a small grady white center cockpit. She was complaining about the cost of gas for it and said how great it was that he could harness the wind for free. He quickly ran the calculations and showed her that he spent more per mile on sails than she did on gas!

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by accomplice

Reminds me of an old friend who had a Baltic 52 which he raced and equipped with expensive laminate sails. He was talking to another friend of ours who had a small grady white center cockpit. She was complaining about the cost of gas for it and said how great it was that he could harness the wind for free. He quickly ran the calculations and showed her that he spent more per mile on sails than she did on gas!

We have discussed this issue on here more than once.

I think sailing might be cheaper than motoring on smaller boats with cheaper sails which last tens of thousands of miles. When boats get bigger, the loads on the sails go up geometrically, and so the sails are disproportionately more expensive and don't last as long.

I have never had any doubt that sailing is more expensive than motoring on my boat. I average 1 liter per mile, which is less than $2 per mile with fuel at UK prices. I doubt if I will ever get more than 15,000 miles or so out of a set of sails. The math is not complicated. And the cost of sailing is not just sails -- running rigging, standing rigging, deck gear -- all this stuff is subject to wear and tear. I just did my standing rigging last year at a cost of more than $15,000. I probably could have gotten a few more years out of it (my boat was built in 2001), but still.

[accomplice]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I have never had any doubt that sailing is more expensive than motoring on my boat. I average 1 liter per mile, which is less than $2 per mile with fuel at UK prices. I doubt if I will ever get more than 15,000 miles or so out of a set of sails. The math is not complicated. And the cost of sailing is not just sails -- running rigging, standing rigging, deck gear -- all this stuff is subject to wear and tear. I just did my standing rigging last year at a cost of more than $15,000. I probably could have gotten a few more years out of it (my boat was built in 2001), but still.

Getting the last mile out of a set of sails is one thing, but if one uses one's standing rigging to the point of failure the costs become astronomical. To get 12 years out of standing rigging on a offshore boat seems quite reasonable to me.

[ctl411]

If you care as much about sailing performance as you say, ditch the furling main. Get some roach and better flow with the new rig. You will then be able to run smaller head sails. I ran a over size full batten main on my old cutter. I even had battens put in my "light" staysail.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by ctl411

If you care as much about sailing performance as you say, ditch the furling main. Get some roach and better flow with the new rig. You will then be able to run smaller head sails. I ran a over size full batten main on my old cutter. I even had battens put in my "light" staysail.

Ditching the furling main is not an option. The boat was designed for it, for one thing, and I would have to replace the entire rig to change to a conventional main. For another, the furling main has too many advantages for a large cruiser sailed in places like this with a lot of strong weather (English Channel, North Sea). Which is why 50'+ cruising boats in this part of the world without furling mains are practically nonexistent.

I would prefer a conventional main in the tropics or in a place with mostly lighter wind, or on a small boat, but at this latitude, the furling main is the way to go, despite the loss of performance.

[weavis]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Ditching the furling main is not an option. The boat was designed for it, for one thing, and I would have to replace the entire rig to change to a conventional main. For another, the furling main has too many advantages for a large cruiser sailed in places like this with a lot of strong weather (English Channel, North Sea). Which is why 50'+ cruising boats in this part of the world without furling mains are practically nonexistent.

I would prefer a conventional main in the tropics or in a place with mostly lighter wind, or on a small boat, but at this latitude, the furling main is the way to go, despite the loss of performance.

It would appear that you are psyching yourself up for a major Boat change.

[ctl411]

Yup that's what I'm saying. Ditch the whole mast. Just a guess but the designer was pushed on the mast by a "salesman" to sell the boat as easier to sail.
Email a designer like Bob Perry and ask. If you want the performance of a raceboat do what they do.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by ctl411

Yup that's what I'm saying. Ditch the whole mast. Just a guess but the designer was pushed on the mast by a "salesman" to sell the boat as easier to sail.
Email a designer like Bob Perry and ask. If you want the performance of a raceboat do what they do.

Furling masts are universally demanded by sailors in this part of the world for the reasons I stated. It is almost impossible to buy an Oyster, Swan, HR, Contest or other high-end, large cruising boat in North Europe without a furling mast, because the advantages are overwhelming and almost no one wants a conventional main. Up here we regularly sail in F8 conditions and even stronger, and you just don't want to be wrestling short-handed with a conventional main on a big boat in conditions like that, considering the size of the sails on boats this size.

If you want the performance of a race boat, you need not just a full batten main, you need -- a race boat. You need a stripped-out carbon hull shaped like a wedge without a single extra kilo of weight in it. A cruising boat built for extended cruises and loaded down with gear is a different animal with different design values.

My boat has a bulb keel, fully cored Kevlar hull, and a lot of attention paid to peformance, and I can easily make 200 mile days with a decent sailing wind. I am in general happy with the performance; I just need to get upwind better. I am certainly not going to change the rig, which would cost hundreds of thousands, and for what.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by weavis

It would appear that you are psyching yourself up for a major Boat change.

Ha, you are alluding to the other thread, about the perfect 65' cruiser

Well, these two threads are kind of two parallel realities: in one of them, I am fantasizing about a possible boat change, which is unfunded and so not going to happen in the near future. In the other, I am working on concrete, practical solutions to sailing on my present boat, which I love and which I may never change, to tell the truth.

But the first thread is also relevant to the second -- when you think through exactly what you want a boat to do, it also informs your plans about how to develop the boat you already have.

[ctl411]

OK so money is a issue. I wasn't sure, you are talking about buying sails that cost twice what I spent on my whole boat lol. So you still want to cut weight up high. High tech sails and line are your options. Try to find some used head sails to see if the cost of new high tech is worth the cost. You might find having the bottom cleaned more often is more cost effective. I'm assuming you have a feathering prop already. Biggest speed gain for money spent.