Kevlar sails

[kmeeks]

I was at a swap meet back in the summer here in Southern California - and saw a rather large kevlar sail that was being sold for very low $''s. I thought at the time - I wonder if it would be possible to somehow trim such a big sail down so that it would be useful on a smaller boat.

My second thought was - I''ll bet working with kevlar sails would be difficult...probably easier to just buy a used sail that is already sized for my boat (32 ft).

Anyone have any experience doing something along the lines that I''ve described?

[Jeff_H]

Because kevlar stretches so little it is doubly important that a Kevlar sail be cut correctly in the first place both for shape and for stress mapping. When you talk about cutting down a bigger sail than you need it is highly unlikely that you will end up with a sail that has the right shape or that has the right thread orientation.

Jeff