Fuck Kelly.

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Well, kinda. Imagine there’s a tear in the sail, you’d put a patch on it. And on a laminate, or plastic, sail it would be like a big sticker. Of if there is a place where you know something is going to rub constantly, you’d put a chafe patch. And as laminates aren’t very strong when they’re punctured, like with a sewing needle, you’d put reinforcing patches under whatever you want to sew down.

Tbh, I haven’t worked with laminate sails in a long time. I did service and repair work in my shop mostly, for regular sailors. Honestly I used to get a fair bit of work from the bigger lofts where small repair work wasn’t worth it for them it do. And really, these sails aren’t just for big fancy race boats, any sailing club with racers (which is pretty much all of them) will have people with laminate sails. The general public only sees the big races, like the americas cup or vendee globe, but every Wednesday night around the world, there’s regular people out racing.

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Thanks again for all the answers! One more “one more question” if I haven’t scared you off yet -

What are the odds I could get a picture or something specific to Google for what your sewing needle(s) look like? I’m guessing you don’t use the tiny ones people use on clothes.

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tl;dr: they’re no longer pure and must be replaced with new virgin scissors.

Damn that’s a horrible punishment. (I’m at least assuming if fabric scissors are only to be used on cutting fabric).

macrocarpa

Vendee global is amazing! I feel like it's the closest thing to a pure "all rounder" sailing - solo sailors, robust and well-engineered boats that are just smashing it every condition and loving ayvoace as well. I'm subscribed to their updates on YouTube.

So as to the madness of the americas cup - if you look at the sails they each have two wide counter coloured bands on them. when doing boat testing they use upwards facing LIDAR on both sides of the boat to calculate the best sail shape, live, and adjust accordingly. I feel a bit odd about that, I think trimming is one of the fine arts of sailing and to see it automated out is a bit sad. But if you're doing 45 knots on foils, I guess the fewer jobs the better.