We're capable of doing some basic stitching of sails, but I like to have a professional loft look my sails over after we've put a lot of miles on - and before we put a bunch more on.

This year we'd sailed from the Caribbean to the UK so I took our sails to Steve Goacher, close by Windemere and spent a morning with him and his staff. We looked at the two headsails first - which look to be in reasonable shape and some minor repairs are all that's called for.

Not so much the main! Steve inspected the seams closely and some had clearly begun to fail. Those that hadn't failed, he started to pick at with his thumbnail - and was basically able to break the stitching in many other areas. The cloth itself he felt was in reasonable shape (heavy Dacron).

In the end, I got an estimate to repair the sail, along with some proposals for a new sail altogether...
The repair estimate (£850) is about 25% of the new sail cost in similar material (9.46 Contender Fibrecon). (He also quoted in Hydranet 380 - which adds £2,000 to the bill...)
The current sails are only 5 years old, but have about 25,000 miles on them. They've been in the Caribbean for two winter seasons.
I've never much cared for the mainsail - the batten pockets and boxes are a lightweight design, tensioning the leech line is near impossible, and the sail had to be modified straight out of the box due to excessive roach, so the shape has always been a bit off...

We live on the boat full time and plan to do some pretty serious mileage in the coming years - down to Patagonia and then across the Pacific...

Like most, we're on a budget and a new main was not figured into it!

What would you do? Repair or new?

If new,
Is Goacher a reputable sailmaker?
Should I be getting other quotes - who from??
Thoughts about the two fabrics?


Appreciate your thoughts...

Bill Balme

Hi Bill,
My thoughts on your questions:
Assuming a fully battened main. The batten pockets are a design issue: if you are having trouble loading from the leach, another pocket retaining design will likely solve the issue. My battens (5 full length) go in from the leach and I consider the design bulletproof and it has proven to be so. Loading from the luff would be a challenging incorporating the batten box/car and then having the tension be adjustable.
The thread is, I believe, a Gore-Tex product and is/was (it has been 6 years since I researched this) the best choice for sail building. If he has experience with this thread, he has probably been making high end sails as not all machines/needles (if memory serves) can tolerate the abrasiveness of this thread and sailmakers must upgrade to use it.
I am surprised that HydraNet kicks the cost up 50%. I do not remember that differential from 2012.
Leach tension lines dead ended at the boom end are often hard or impossible to get to. My leach line is adjustable both from the gooseneck and from the boom end (and the end of each reef clew) through the use of a small turning block at the head of the sail.
I would always want full length battens to be adjustable as to their tension along the sail, usually a screw at the batten box.
My best, Dick