Main Sail Repair

Now that our Gemini 3200 is in Savannah, it's time for me to revisit some of my sewing projects. I took advantage of Sailrite's 10% off sale and placed a couple of orders, over the last month. One of these orders included materials necessary to complete some minor repairs to our main sail.

The repairs to the main sail included replacement of a broken shackle and slide on the foot of the sail and a permanent repair to a small rip in the sail.

Replacement of the broken shackle and slide was as easy as replacing a light bulb. The only tool needed was a small flat head screwdriver. Remove the old shackle by unscrewing a small screw, place the new slide onto the new shackle, and secure the shackle to the sail via the grommet. One thing to note when replacing a shackle on the foot of the sail is to make sure it is the same size as all of the other shackles. If it isn't, then the slide won't be the same distance away from the edge of the sail as the other slides and could cause chaffing on the sail. Sailrite recommends that if you are not sure about size of the shackle needed, replace all of the shackles so that they are all the same size.

The permanent repair to the small rip in our main sail allowed me to work with one of the newest members of our crew, Beulah . For this repair, I needed two pieces of 3"x 7" 4oz. Dacron sailcloth, V-92 white thread, 3/8" seamstick basting tape, and Beulah. After cutting out the sailcloth patches, I placed double stick seamstick on one side of both pieces of sailcloth patches, placed the patches over the center of the rip on both sides of the sail, and stitched the patches down using Beulah. The sail repair was a relativity easy repair. The only difficulty I had was maneuvering the sail under Ultrafeed LSZ to get the stitches exactly where they were needed.

The main sail is now ready to be placed back on the boom.