Oct 21, 2005 - Sails: Preventative Maintenance
by Scott and Wendy Bannerot

	As we make our way into an anchorage, when we reach the point where we would not need our sails for power if we were to lose the engine, we neatly furl and secure sails. This is our first step in sail maintenance. Wendy, Paea Tavake, and Ryan have already done this as we approach seldom-visited Tafahi, northernmost Kingdom of Tonga.

When I purchased Elan in 1986 from her original owner, she was only eight years old, and fresh from her first ocean crossing of the Atlantic from her birth place in France. The young French family that had commissioned her in late 1978 spared little expense outfitting with what was then a full complement of sails - working jib, intermediate jib, genoa, main, storm jib, and storm trysail. The main, working jib, and genoa, in that order, had the most wear and sun exposure, but by the time I'd recovered from the purchase, consolidated financially, and (improbably) snagged Wendy, the entire sail inventory was still deemed adequate to get us to New Zealand. So we added an asymmetrical cruising spinnaker and off we went across the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal in early 1995 from Florida.

Once at anchor, we get those covers on even if we're tired. UV is one of the most destructive forces undermining sail longevity on long-distance cruising boats.

Prior to departure we'd added a new Sailrite sewing machine to the fairly complete sail repair kit already aboard, along with a few rolls of sail repair tape. It didn't take long for us to dig in to these supplies, as a tear began to develop along the bottom seam of the foot in the main, sailing northwest along the Panama coast for Costa Rica. I whipped out the Sailrite at the first opportunity but couldn't fit the fat bottom part of the foot through the necessary area to do the whole patch. So I sewed this portion using the old familiar flat stitch and sailor's palm. I was well acquainted with the latter after crewing on a large motorsailor with very worn-out sails. We'd fairly routinely tear the jib nearly in half in Caribbean breezes, hand-sew it back together, and put it up again - sun come dry us, rain come wet us, we didn't care. Another time a rat chewed a hole right through the head of the main, and it was just easier to drop it and hand-stitch the patch rather than dig out the big sewing machine. By the time we'd spent 18 months crisscrossing the equator and making it to New Zealand, the mainsail was nearly unrecognizable, a UV-rotted bag that you could, with effort, tear by hand. The bionic working jib was really worn but still strong, and the genoa was misshapen and never again to resume her former firm, maidenly flair. We replaced these, and sold the intermediate jib (actually we gave/bartered this to a shipwright friend), installed a roller furler, new main, and an auxiliary headstay and new hank-on working jib for emergencies. We kept the storm jib and trysail.

That's the background. Now, to make this set of sails last for many more years of cruising, here is what we did.

Obviously we were sensitive to the deformities that result from a combination of heavy wind use and excessive UV, so we increased our efforts not to be lazy about being slightly over-canvassed/over-powered. We also meticulously cover our new main, never putting this off until the next day upon arrival at an anchorage. Any sail doused on deck in wet conditions we try to bag up at least reasonably dry. We rarely rinse, clean, and dry all salt-penetrated sails and re-stow them- and we essentially never do this while out cruising for lack of fresh water. I say rarely, because during our last active stint of cruising we went 2 1/2 years without tying up in a marina slip or access to running fresh water on board. If we were to do shorter range cruising with stops in marinas we'd definitely attempt to rinse our sails as needed, granted access to running water.

Nevertheless, sail maintenance largely falls into the category of what you can't reasonably concern yourself about when you are out there. On a hard-working long-distance boat, operated by a short-handed crew with limited resources, many things that might be done by a day sailor are simply not feasible. It's analogous to varnish - by the time you get across the Pacific, very few owner/operators opt to keep this up - they remove it and replace it with something requiring less maintenance. So we cover our sails and keep them up as well as we can under the circumstances, and the rest is a science experiment. Better to do what you can, then stop worrying and simply enjoy yourself.

	Under sail, we make an effort not to remain over-canvassed if the wind comes up. Steve Trevurza, expert Kiwi sailmaker who fabricated our "new" set of sails in 1998 (still going strong), emphasized to us the importance of reefing and furling according to the range of wind velocity for which sails are designed, and how chronic over-stress drastically shortens their lives.

We ended up selling the sail sewing machine in New Zealand before moving on. It was large and ponderous, we had no good place to store it, and the minor repairs we needed to perform could in every case be done more quickly by hand than by messing around with that machine. Also, neither of us were particularly inclined to do extracurricular work on it, such as canvas or clothing. I mean nothing negative about these machines, I'm just saying it didn't suit our circumstances or priorities. I think for other situations and crews they could be a wonderful asset.

Over the years we also began opting for other solutions to the small tears incurred on a fairly rare basis. We found a brand of sail tape that sticks quite well; we slap a piece of that on either side and keep on sailing. If that eventually fails, we stitch along the margins of the tape. This worked especially well when I poked the spinnaker pole straight through the spinnaker (finally) during one of my ill-advised running sets (from which I retired after this long overdue incident) en route to Australia. That stitched tape patch is still on there. Otherwise you can't beat cutting out the typically L-shaped tear into a rectangular hole, cutting a larger rectangular patch of spare sail material, folding under the edges after making 45-degree cuts in each corner, and then flat-stitching right around with some heavy thread and hard pressure on your sailor's palm. It's time consuming, but these repairs seem to last forever, or until the sail dies, whichever comes first.