Sail Repair Advice

[lancelot9898]

I'm replacing the sunbrella sacrifical cloth on the furling jib and while I will contact sailrite about this I wondered if anyone here has some suggestions. In the process of removing the old cloth I did not leave any excess material exposed around the clew compressed ring hardware. I don't think that will be an issue since new webbing will be sewn in however how do I get a good fit of the sunbrella around that clew ring? I'm thinking maybe a bead of 5200 would work?? Will it degrade the cloth?

Another question is the holes remaining on the sail from the old sacrifical strip and repair thoughout the years. Would some sail repair tape over all those holes be appropriate and then install the new cloth slightly above the old holes?

[DwayneSpeer]

I can't answer your questions but I wanted to advise you to be careful about spending much money on old sails as I've seen several cases where old sails were repaired and then failed soon after simply because the cloth was old and weak. The new set of holes became the weak spot for the failure.