Up next in 10
Après 20 000 milles marins, nos voiles sont en fin de vie. Ce n'est pas qu'ils ont des trous ou des larmes. Cependant, ils s'étirent avec le temps et une mauvaise forme de voile réduit les performances et rend le talon du bateau plus.
Alors que nous sommes préparés pour l’hiver, il est temps de commander une nouvelle suite, mais ce n’est pas un choix facile!
Nous avons besoin de bonnes relations avec notre voilier. Nous voulons pouvoir leur parler de toutes nos exigences. Ils ont besoin de comprendre notre navigation, ce que nous proposons de faire et d’être là pour gérer les livraisons partout dans le monde.
Nous avons finalement choisi Precision Sails, basé au Canada.
Pourquoi?
Premièrement, ils sont très présents. Ils ont aidé à chaque étape du processus, du choix de la voile au choix du matériau qui convient à notre navigation. Leur prix est compétitif, ils peuvent être livrés partout dans le monde et garantissent que si, pour une raison quelconque, la voile ne convient pas, ils vous feront une nouvelle voile, pas seulement une nouvelle.
Il faut donc aujourd'hui mesurer, puis mesurer à nouveau et enfin mesurer à nouveau. Precision Sails nous a envoyé une liste complète de mesures à prendre pour assurer un ajustement parfait à tout point de la voile.
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0:00
Good morning beautiful people, welcome to another Technical Tuesday episode
0:22
This is going to be an episode relating to sails, the sails on our boat
0:26
As you can probably hear from the clanging outside, we are in a boatyard. Our season is now almost at an end and at the end of every season we look to the boat
0:33
and think, what do we need? What do we need to do for next season? What do we need to do to make sure that next season this boat is doing what it needs to do
0:40
So one of the things that has been on our list for a while now is to get a new set of sails
0:45
Not because our sails are at the end of their lives, but they're coming to the end of their
0:48
working lives. And when we have three months off to kind of like pull the boat out and get things delivered
0:54
where we're in one place, it's time for us to choose a new set of sails
0:59
Now the reason we need new sails is not because they're worn out and there are holes in, it's because as sails age they stretch and when they stretch their performance goes
1:06
And when we talk about performance we're talking about healing really. The baggier the sails, the more the boat will heal because the wind simply fills the sails
1:13
rather than driving the boat. So if you think your boat is healing excessively and the sails are old, there's your problem
1:23
So the first thing to do is to identify a sailmaker and which one we're going to use
1:27
Now it's not as simple as you would think. There are obviously most yards and most towns that deal with sailing have sailmakers available
1:35
There are also online sailmakers, there's the big sail companies. What do we look for in a sailmaker
1:39
So a couple of things. Firstly, we need to know that the sailmaker is going to be able to work with us
1:44
Now that means that they need to talk about what we need from the sail and that's what
1:49
sort of sailing we're going to do, what sort of performance do we want. And that then runs into what materials are we going to use
1:55
The next thing for us is delivery. We need to be with a sailmaker or working with a sailmaker that can deliver sails to
2:02
wherever we are. And most sailmakers can do that. It's easy. We can send it to anywhere in the world. Timbuktu
2:07
But importantly, what happens if there's a problem? Now we needed to find a sailmaker that would say to us, look, if there's a problem with
2:14
a sail, just send it back, we'll get you a new sail. We're not going to recut it, we will just get you a new sail
2:19
So we want some sort of guarantee that if anything goes wrong in the process, our investment
2:22
is protected. I'm going to save you the boring bit of choosing a sailmaker, we've already done the research
2:28
We are going to go with Precision Sails who are based in Canada. We are in Spain, they are in Canada
2:33
I've talked to them, we have talked to them. And that to us is really important, being able to have dialogue with your sailmaker
2:38
someone that you can talk to and say, actually, this is what we want. And they come back to you with an answer and options for you
2:44
So that's where we're going with this. We have talked about materials and I'm going to run very quickly through the materials
2:55
that we have chosen and the options that were put to us first
3:00
Now, as you may know, we are cruisers, we are economical cruisers, I think is the expression
3:05
We cruise as fast as we can, but we're not racers. So for us, the kind of carbon and the kind of like the moulded mylar sails, it's not
3:13
really, it's not the kind of thing we're going to do. We won't get the benefit from it
3:17
And again, they are much more expensive. So again, we are looking at Dacron sails or laminate sails or cruising laminate sails
3:25
For those of you who don't know what that means, I will kind of run through it with you briefly
3:29
Dacron sails are your standard white sails, they're white woven sails and they come really
3:34
in two incarnations. There are the slab cut sails, which are large panels of Dacron that are sewn together to
3:39
form a sail. And there are the radial sails, which are many, many different pieces of Dacron sewn together
3:48
They give a much better sail shape, but because there's more panels involved, they're more expensive
3:52
Laminate sails, again, they're radial in pattern, but they are made of a laminate
3:56
Now a laminate is normally different materials laminated together. They give a much better sail shape, although they are more expensive initially
4:05
Now the reason I say initially is the initial investment is higher, but the sails will give
4:10
you performance for longer. They don't stretch as quickly. So you tend to go, you tend to put yourself in a position where you pay a little bit more
4:18
at the beginning, but you get performance for a lot longer. I think that's where we're going to go
4:22
We've decided on a set of cruising laminate sails. So we're going to get the performance of laminate, but with the ease of kind of like the Dacron
4:31
cruising sails. So that's our choice. Today we are going to go and measure for these sails
4:37
So it's again, I'm going to talk to you about the measurements that we required. The sailmakers sent us some forms
4:42
We will go through all that and make sure that we've got the measurements done absolutely accurately so we can then move on to talk to you about fitting the sails when the sails
4:50
finally arrive and then talk to you about performance and how that performance is compared
4:54
to our old sails. So job one today is to measure all of the important dimensions for the sails that we
5:04
currently have. This isn't just the three corners of the sails and the length between them
5:08
This is also little tiny things like the mask rake, the distance between the furling drum
5:14
and the deck and other little things that are going to ensure that when we get these
5:17
sails, they fit absolutely perfectly. So we've got a couple of hours of work here to make sure we measure, measure again, and
5:23
then measure three times to make sure that these measurements are absolutely perfect
5:28
So on we go. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty
5:46
Well, we now need to do some measurements that we don't have a long enough tape measure for
6:04
So the measurement is about 18 metres, 18 metres in height
6:15
So we need to get measurements done and we're going to use a line to do those measurements
6:21
It's really important with your lines that you use a very, very low stretch line
6:25
Otherwise you're going to get distortion. This is not going to be under any load, but you do need to kind of push it down so there's
6:30
no little sag in the line as possible to get an accurate reading
6:34
So the next readings we need are from the top of the attachment point to the bottom
6:38
of the furler. And again, the sailmaker is asking for these, so we'll get those done
6:43
We will then mark the point with black insulating tape and we always just measure from the middle
6:53
of the insulating tape so there's no confusion. Some people do it from the top or the bottom, but it just lends itself to confusion
6:58
I don't want to mark the rope with a pen or a sharpie. So that's what we're doing now. Okay
7:13
So the next measurements we need are the measurements that I, the only ones I thought we were going
7:36
to need from the sailmaker, which are the luff, the leech and the foot of the sail. So it's just the three, three length, the lengths of the three sides
8:00
So we've done all the measurements for the headsail. That's all finished
8:03
And now we need to do the main. Nick's just taken it off the mast, taken off the boom and dropped it onto the ground
8:12
And now we have to do some measurements. So thank you so much for watching this episode
8:45
I hope that was really useful for you. Again, it kind of highlights the entire process that we are going through from realizing we need
8:53
new sails, identifying a sailmaker, discussing materials, what we're going to use, discussing
8:58
cost, and then moving forward through the process of measuring, having the sails delivered
9:03
which will be subsequent episodes. And then the performance of these cells and how they perform over the season as we go into the Mediterranean
9:10
Again, there's a lot of information. I'll put a lot more information down below, put some links down below, and we'll put something
9:16
up there as well, just a little annotation so you can kind of make some choices yourself
9:20
And also there's, I think Precision Sails at the moment are going to do a discount for anyone
9:25
choosing sails. They've got some Black Friday thing going on. So again, it's time dependent
9:29
But at the moment, if you click on the link down below, there is a discount code or there'll be a
9:33
page to a discount code for Precision Sails if that's what you, if you're in the market for a new
9:38
set of sails. So I'm hoping that's really going to work for you. And again, the next Technical Tuesday episode we'll do in this series will be on the fitting of
9:46
the sails. So thank you so much for watching. Please feel free to tune in next week for another regular episode or Technical Tuesdays coming up
9:53
in the future. So thanks very much. Bye-bye. Where do I start
10:00
I got lost
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