Hi All,

I have recently purchased a North Shore 27 and wanting to replace the current main sail. I use the yacht for cruising and a little racing. Any recommendations for a fully battened main? Someone told me an etchells main will fit without having to customize?

Thanks

Adam

N27Vidal said..
Hi All,

I have recently purchased a North Shore 27 and wanting to replace the current main sail. I use the yacht for cruising and a little racing. Any recommendations for a fully battened main? Someone told me an etchells main will fit without having to customize?

Thanks

Adam

I use Etchells mains on a similar-size boat. On the plus side, you can buy beautiful sails cheaply. On the down side, they are made of highly resinated dacron (which means that they don't like being flogged, scrunched onto the boom or poorly folded as they crease) and they don't come with reef points. Overall, I rate them highly; it doesn't cost too much to have reef points in and the mains still look good after a few years of local cruising and racing and a few hundred offshore miles.

As a dinghy/beach cat/windsurfer sailor, I'm used to full battens but on a yacht they can require expensive hardware (such as really good cars) or suffer other compromises such as compression loading pushing the luff forward onto the mast, so that the sail suffers from significant friction when being hoisted. It could be worth looking at a very light set of full battens, which may reduce flogging significantly without significantly increasing the required hardware and weight.

The Etchells sail dimensions are on the class site, of course. I wonder if you could also use J/24 headsails on a NS27?

I have three fully battened mainsails for my 30 footer. That size sail is fine with full battens and use just normal slides. Full battens work better with a stackpack/lazyjack setup when lowering. Bit harder to raise the sail, have to watch the first couple of battens as you raise. Only downside is the sail never fully depowers, the battens will hold some sail shape so if your sailing onto a mooring it's something to be aware of.

Have a look at Tony Bull's web page for photos and info. Tony designed my furling headsail and then had it made in the China factory [where lots of other big name sailmakers sails are made]. The NS27 main is pretty small, you maybe surprised how cheap a Dacron sail in cruising cloth costs.

Thanks all for your advice I will start looking at the suggestions.

Happy sailing

Chris 249 said..

N27Vidal said..
Hi All,

I have recently purchased a North Shore 27 and wanting to replace the current main sail. I use the yacht for cruising and a little racing. Any recommendations for a fully battened main? Someone told me an etchells main will fit without having to customize?

Thanks

Adam

I use Etchells mains on a similar-size boat. On the plus side, you can buy beautiful sails cheaply. On the down side, they are made of highly resinated dacron (which means that they don't like being flogged, scrunched onto the boom or poorly folded as they crease) and they don't come with reef points. Overall, I rate them highly; it doesn't cost too much to have reef points in and the mains still look good after a few years of local cruising and racing and a few hundred offshore miles.

As a dinghy/beach cat/windsurfer sailor, I'm used to full battens but on a yacht they can require expensive hardware (such as really good cars) or suffer other compromises such as compression loading pushing the luff forward onto the mast, so that the sail suffers from significant friction when being hoisted. It could be worth looking at a very light set of full battens, which may reduce flogging significantly without significantly increasing the required hardware and weight.

The Etchells sail dimensions are on the class site, of course. I wonder if you could also use J/24 headsails on a NS27?

We had that problem but you can buy 'cars' with wheels as slugs ( sorry can't think of the name of the things that slot into the mast track) so that it is easy to pull up! Stops the compression.well worth the $. We went form having trouble getting the main up using extra purchase on the halyard to having it easy and it will now fall down if you let it off ( it used to be really hard to get down too).