Start from the sailing

Genoa or jib? Wrong question.

Most sail websites ask you to already know what you want. You don’t need to. You know how you sail — weekends in the bay, passages shorthanded, an ocean, a Wednesday night start line. Tell us that, and the sail answers itself. Here’s the same thinking we’d do on the phone.

Day & weekend You sail weekends, mostly in the bay Coastal cruising You do passages, and you do them shorthanded Bluewater You're crossing something Club racing You race the same fleet every Wednesday Multihull You sail two hulls

Day & weekend

You sail weekends, mostly in the bay

Short hops, an afternoon breeze, home before dark. The engine goes on when the wind dies. The boat sits on its mooring far more hours than it sails.

What that does to your sails

Your sails spend most of their life furled in the sun, not under load. That flips the priorities: UV protection and easy handling matter more than a fast shape, and the sacrificial strip on a furling headsail is doing more work than the cloth is. Weight and stretch barely get tested; sunlight does all the damage.

So we’d build you

A crosscut Dacron main and furling genoa — forgiving, repairable, honest
A sacrificial UV strip that gets replaced before it fails, not after
A stack pack or good cover, because covering it is the maintenance

Cruising sails →Covers & canvas →How to make it last →

Coastal cruising

You do passages, and you do them shorthanded

Weekends away, a fortnight in the summer, headlands and tides. Two of you, sometimes one on watch. Reefing happens at night, in a lump, without a full crew on deck.

What that does to your sails

Now the sail has to be handled as much as sailed. Everything is judged by what it's like to reef, furl and stow when it's blowing and you're tired. Shape matters — you actually go to windward — but not at the cost of a sail two people can't manage.

So we’d build you

Full or semi-full batten main with reefs where your boat wants them
A furling genoa with a foam luff, so it still sets when it's part-rolled
Honest cloth for the miles, not a race cloth that hates being furled

Cruising sails →Mainsails →Headsails →

Bluewater

You're crossing something

Long ocean legs, trade winds, days on the same tack. Weeks from a loft, and further from a spare. The sail is chafing against something 24 hours a day, whether you can see it or not.

What that does to your sails

Two things dominate and neither is speed: chafe and redundancy. Every spreader end, stanchion and lazy jack is a file working on your cloth. And a sail you can't repair at sea is a sail you can't rely on — which is why simple, sewable construction beats clever construction a long way from help.

So we’d build you

Heavier cloth than a coastal boat needs — the weight buys you margin
Chafe patches where your rig actually touches, not where a catalogue guesses
A repair kit and a sail built so a repair is possible with it

Cruising sails →Repair or replace? →Measure your boat →

Club racing

You race the same fleet every Wednesday

A start line, a windward mark, people you know beating you by half a leg. The same boats, the same water, all season. Class rules that say what you can and can't do.

What that does to your sails

Here shape is the product, and it has to keep its shape — a sail that goes soft in August is a sail that lost you the second half of the season. Lower-stretch cloth and radial load paths earn their money. And the class rules are not a suggestion: a fast sail that doesn't measure is worthless.

So we’d build you

Radial or tri-radial construction, so the load runs along the fibres
Cloth that holds its shape for a season, not a fortnight
Built to your class rules — we build to the rule, not around it

Racing sails →One-design price list →Design your kite →

Multihull

You sail two hulls

Cats and tris — beach cats through cruising multihulls. Wide sheeting base, no keel to lean on, and apparent wind that runs away from you when it goes well.

What that does to your sails

A multihull doesn't heel to dump a gust — it just loads up. So the sail sees loads a monohull sheds, and the rig is stiffer with less give. That means more roach and fuller battens, and cloth chosen for load rather than for the boat's length.

So we’d build you

Full-batten main with real roach, built for the load and not the LOA
Downwind sails cut for apparent wind, not for a monohull's angles
Honest advice on cloth — a cat and a 40ft monohull are not the same sail

Cruising sails →Downwind sails →Talk to a sailmaker →

Fleet of beach catamarans with orange and yellow sails lined up on the sand — No keel, no heel: a cat’s rig carries the gust instead of dumping it — the sail has to be built for that load, not for the boat’s length.

None of the above?

Most boats are a mix. That’s normal.

You cruise in July and race on Wednesdays. You’re coastal now and crossing next year. The suit that fits is the one that suits your compromise — and working that out with you is the job. Tell us how you actually sail and we’ll tell you honestly where to spend and where not to.

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