Choosing the best cruising sail
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- Опубліковано 13 сер 2024
- Let's face it there are no shortage of things to spend your money on with a sailboat! But there aren't many more rewarding things to splash out on than a new suit of sails.
We held it off too long with our Yankee and it actually fell apart on us at the end of last season! That was partly because as a cruiser you're rarely in one place long enough to get to know and trust a sail loft to know they are going to deliver what you want.
We heard lots of good things about Precision sails, though, and after meeting them in Annapolis last year we went ahead with ordering out new sail from them.
This video takes you through that process, from the research we did before the order, through the consultations with Precisions sail designers to having the sail delivered and testing it out.
We go through sail cloth choice, which cut to go with and many other choices to get the best possible sail for cruising. Some of the decisions may surprise you, but I can tell you we are extremely happy with the outcome and think we have the best possible sail for what we want to do.
We can thoroughly recommend working with Precision Sails, do check them out at... www.precisionsailloft.com/
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Thank you so much Steve and Judy for the hard work of putting this video together. I think this will help many sailors learn more about the sail making process.
The entire team at Precision Sails loved working with you on the new Yankee project and look forward to the opportunity to update Fair Isle's sail inventory as she makes her way around the world.
We recently purchase a sail from Precision for our 43 year of racer/cruiser. We use it for racing on SF Bay. I’m pretty satisfied with the sail but have second thought about not getting it from a local sailmaker. The primary reason we selected Precision was cost. Our new 135 was just over $3000 from them, well a similar sail locally was $6000-$8500. That’s a big saving. Yes it took three months to get here and yes you don’t get to just call someone and get them to make a small adjustment but given the price difference I don’t see how a local sailmaker will be able to remain in business and I question if that’s a good thing.
I definitely need to start saving your videos. The knowledge you share is worth having. You never know when dreams will come to fruition.
Great video as always.
Really interesting and informative about a subject that you don’t see a lot of information about yet most boat owners have to make this decision.
Thanks once again for providing so many useful ideas and gadgets. I am definitely going to check out a few.
I thought I was just tired and imagining it, but nope, the sun keeps moving and his watch keeps switching arms. 🤣
I told you, these guys are magicians 😵💫
Interesting video. I raced on a boat with 4 year old cruising laminates. They held shape until their 5 hour end of life experience. De-laminated one day, split the next.
Yes laminates tend to fall off a cliff when they come to end of life, not a great trait for a cruiser. There’s someone in the comments here that’s a real fan boy for North sails 3Di sails but you’re liable to get a similar fast decline with them too. I think that unless you have a big enough boat to carry spare sails you are leaving yourself quite exposed going with anything like that. We had to patch up our Yankee for the whole of last summer cruising through Turkey and Greece, we would have been in real trouble if it just completely died in the spring, we didn’t have time to stop and have a new sail built.
An interesting process. Gone are the days when a sailmaker would not only measure the boat, but also come out sailing/racing before/after to see what was needed, make any adjustments, give advice on trimming, compatability with other sails, settings. As they said knowing the boat and conditions it will be sailed in are important.
I’m sure you can still find that service if you look hard enough and your pockets are deep enough! I personally like the fact that you have more involvement with Precision you can take it as far as you like, send them pictures/videos and they will give you advice, you can see they enjoy that part of the service.
no, those days are not gone. i recently had a local sailmaker build me a set of hydranet sails, measured, made in a local loft, installed, fitted - they will disappear if everyone buys generic sails online
@@akathesquid5794 These aren’t ‘generic sails,’ far from it, they are designed specifically for you and your boat to exacting standards. I agree that if you have a local loft you trust and who will supply the sails you need and give personal service at a price you can cope with then go with that. For us though Precision provide a service that’s as close to that as possible but is available to us anywhere in the world, they have become our ‘local’ sail loft! And the price is good too.
Look's good! I wonder if you can sail closer to the wind:) Sure we will see that when the mainsail also is replaced.
We sail closest with the Staysail as it's sheeting angle is better so I think that sail will make the most difference to how high we point along with the main. We've increased the size of the yankee so I hope we will get better downwind performance,
Precision Sails seem to have developed a very unique business model, and have been getting lots of coverage from UA-cam sailing channels. Everyone seems happy also.
It's not all that unique really... Lots of companies pretend to make quality items in house while in reality, they just order it from China and ship it to you.
Good effort flipping the 2 shot to cover up crossing the line in the interview set up 😅
Good spot, but can you figure out why I cross the line with the cameras in the first place?
@@svfairisle I'd guess that you were in a tight spot (both literally and figuratively). Not a lot of time at the show with the Precision guys... not a lot of choice on quiet locations... made do with what you've got... can't put the B cam in the right spot cos it would be in the drink... only a real pedant is gonna notice 😂 Am I close?
Yes pretty close. It was a tight spot and you might notice in the 2 shot I have the main camera on the gorilla grip because we didnt have the tripod with us. So to get the right height for the eye-line I had to mount it on a trolley that was there and there was no room for the trolly on the other side. I had to place all the edits when the interviewee's had their hands together, if I cut when they were gesturing with one hand you would easily notice on the cut that it looked like the other hand!
@@svfairisle Well, I see you. Wouldn't want your efforts to go unremarked 😉
That's the advantage of editing your own stuff, huh... not haven't to explain to your editor before they see the rushes and freak out! lol
That new yankee looked on the CAD screen to be over a 100% sail, which after talking to you about your headsails before, is quite a bit larger than your previous one. I suppose you will get a performance benefit from that?
Would be interested to know about your HF and VHF radio systems, and other info re radar and ship proximity guards. I am a licensed radio ham and always look to receive Mm signals. Thanks. Phil, Suffolk. March ‘24.
We've replaced the rigging now so dont have the insulated back stay as an antenna, Starlink has taken over as long distance coms. We crossed the Atlantic a few weeks ago and it gave us seamless connection all the way across, not as much fun as ham radio but a whole lot more powerful! We still have the radar on a gimbaled mount and of course AIS on the VHF system which is the most important bit of nav gear on the boat.
@@svfairisle Thank you for the reply. I have no knowledge of Starlink. I shall look it up and learn. Looking forward to that. Safe cruising. Thanks again. Phil. Suffolk 🇬🇧
Your new sail looks nice with the logo. What was the process of making that happen?
Precision have a few options of having it printed directly on the sail or as a sticker that can be replaced. Ours is a sticker but you wouldn't know. They adjusted the logo so the writing is only on one side as with the light going through you can see some of the image from the other side so non symmetrical logos are a bit more tricky.
So on the scale or durability vs performance, were do you lean?
Well obviously you want both, and luckily with the advances in cloth and construction you can pretty much get it. I think you would have to be an out and out racer to be disappointed with the performance you can get with a good Dacron based sail these days, even a cross cut one. Personally durability is key for me, if we weren’t thinking of sailing in remote places then I might have gone the next small step up and got radial cut sail in something like Warp Drive, but as you heard from Jeremy in the interview they rate the radial cloths as equivalent to their 400series cross cut cloths, so not quite as robust as the 500series we went for. I think most high end I would go as a cruiser if I wanted the maximum possible performance would be a radial cut Hydranet sail. It probably doesn’t make financial sense but I think that’s that’s the ultimate performance while still keeping durability, you just have to pay for it!
Extremely disappointed with PrecisionSails. Preparing to sail the Atlantic/Caribbean alone, they didn't ever bother to respond to my requests for quotes. With now the Pacific ahead of me, my turn to not bother with them.
That’s very odd everyone we know including us has found them very responsive. I know they are doing well and expanding, they maybe needing more people to cope.
3 minutes in we get 2 commercials? Not good!
Thanks for letting me know, UA-cam put them in, I usually go through and delete them (you cant delete them all as YT just put them in and take the money themselves now!) I'll go in and delete that one right now though.
Call the coastguard.
I recently found UA-cam is putting adverts in my non-monetized 4 minute videos! I have no control over it. Surely a big fat cheque will be in my mailbox any day now. A 100 views has to be worth something, surely.
I don't get any ads...I dunno how that works but it pleases me (although I hope it doesn't detract from your income).
Guys, you must decide where you are taking your money from. Either the youtube users or the manufactures. Any advertorial should be presented as such. How can one trust your conclusions if you just read the memo from the manufacturer? You are flying a flag on your boat, you know what i mean...
We aren't taking any money from Precision, this is not an advertorial. We chose Precision sails to make our sails not the other way around. Precision give us a good deal, but part of the thing about being a YT channel is all the manufacturers will offer you some sort of deal as they get exposure (well that's not strictly true, some do not want to risk a YT channel like us who will say what they think about a product without bias) We find this quite useful actually as we don't want bad equipment aboard and this is a good way to work out how much manufacturers believe in their products and weed out the bad ones. Rest assured if we have problems or get a sub standard bit of gear we say so as we have done before.
i dont recall anyone asking for your trust in the episode. you are not that important mate, rest assured. i dont think either the channel or the sail manufacturer needs your trust to keep their bussiness. i do recall having a look into the process of sail making by someone who chose to go with said manufacturer, which happens to be same as mine. its always great to have more inside knowledge on how they do things.
@@svfairisle Great video.
It gave me answers or questions to raise.
In my opinion you have done the balance very well.
No doubt you like your sails (and the manufacturer). Main focus is on the considerations and the process You had, of getting new sail.
As always an honest record of Your experiences and advice.
@@svfairisle I must admit to being suspicious of advertorial content in UA-cam videos, but seriously, every real world boat owner that I have come across that has Precision Sails says exactly the same as you. Your coverage was very interesting in that you went into the decision process covering several points that are important to those of us that spend too much time near the equator.
@Radu Dumitru you obviously didn’t watch his video at Annapolis on Oyster Yachts. That got him into hot water for being critical of them. One of the reasons he has a loyal following is the integrity of his work, calling it as it is. You can’t form a judgment based on one video. There are literally scores of videos in which he dispassionately reviews all manner of products. Some come out of it well, others not so, and that’s why I and thousands of others keep watching.