I'll keep this brief, but I feel that it's necessary as a
service to other sailors and due to
safety implications of defective
work. This supplier should be avoided. They aren't even
cheap, if you thought that might justify the risk.
I would be happy to share more details and photos if requested.
In short I took a chance on this company for a new set of
sails. They are stitchers working from CAD models using imported materials. Unfortunately they are better at stitching up their customers than
sails. So the major errors they made are roughly as follows:
- Losing bearings in halyard cars
- Not stamping eyelets with enough pressure
- making the sail the wrong size
- not completing the replacement of new batten holders
The Zspar system on this vessel needs some care to remove the main sail from the cars, which hold loose bearings. It's easy enough to make the mistake if you've never seen one before, although pretty obvious. It's also pretty easy to tell you're customer if that happened so they can fix it and don't destroy a car in heavy
weather.
When the eyelets are not stamped properly then a sharp edge is present. On this rig, it will cut through reef lines. I found this flaw the hard way, with a bang in heavy
weather.
The sail was made too long despite them taking measurements twice, and having access to the sail plan
documentation of the
boat.
The batten brackets were the first sign that these guys were jokers. They told me they
lost half of them, and so they delivered the sail with half of the batten holders from the old sail. They said they had the new ones on order and would be with me within a week. Weeks of chasing ensued, and eventually they came with a plastic bag full of
parts that were only a half attempt at a local fabrication copy. Several of the stub screws were missing from the batten tensioners in the whole set.
The whole process of getting these sails made took months, after an initial estimate of two weeks, which was obviously pretty over optimistic, They never made any reparations for the flaws I pointed out. Their attitude was simply, well we've got the
money now so we couldn't care less. They started with lies and denials of anything being wrong, and eventually just ignored all
communications when presented with photographs of the issues.
https://www.sails-tech.com/
Watch out!
Linear Mode
Recent Discussions