Mistral's New Mainsail

It's been six months since the scheduled completion date for Mistral's new mainsail. Not too bad, in the context of boat building!

The mast and boom were finished three years ago and Mistral has had an old, used handed down sail until now. Lynne Fabricant of Sailmaker's Art machine sewed the new sail and hand sewed the tack, clew and reef-point cringles. All that remained were the reef point eyelets and bending on the sail track slides, which were also sewn by hand here at home.








It's been a busy week and all hands have been piped to duty.







Below: A reef cringle, a reef eyelet for a nettle and a leach string jam cleat, all sewn with waxed sail twine.










There are still a few details to fine tune on the sail, but there was enough completed as of yesterday to hoist the main and make some calculations for the length of the reefing nettles.




This sail is my own design, so there has been quite a bit of trepidation about how it would work out.

Of course, Lynne's work is impeccable. It was with no small relief that the new main fit as designed and set beautifully! With some fine tuning and a bit of decent weather (could be a while!) and it will be prudent to test Mistral with a full suit of fresh sails, for the first time!

Ever wonder how to hand sew a reef-point eyelet ring? Like watching waves on a beach...

Sewing a Reefpoint Ring from doryman on Vimeo.