Genoa - high tech or traditional?

buchner · #1 (**permalink**) 03-03-2002

In the market for a new furling genoa. Mainly daysail on my CS30 with the family, but I like everyone do like friendly competition with other boats, ie. I do want to go fast. I am caught up in the marketing hype of North Sails 3Dl crusing line. But getting conflicting stories about whetehr a Kevlar with Tafftea , 3DL sail is the way to go.

Jeff_H · #2 (**permalink**) 03-03-2002

Probably Kevlar is not the way to go. Kevlar offers great low stretch characteristics that is important to racers and bigger boats where the loads make stretch so much more of a problem and the need for light weight sails is more important. But the loads on a 30 footer, especially a cruiser who is only looking for a little more speed makes Kevlar unncessary. Kevlar adds quite a bit to the cost of the sail and still is shorter lived for cruising than polyester. North makes a 3DL laminated fabric which has taffeta faces and oriented polyester laminated into the sail. This is being used for jibs on boats like the J-105 and has proven to be a reliable product in that application.

I have slightly mixed emotions about the whole 3DL process. It is an expensive technology and it is not as precise as I would like. I have sailed on two boats that have had multiple sets of 3DL jibs that were all supposed to be indentical. We found big differences between one set to the next. In one case, we had a season of firsts, seconds and thirds, followed by a bunch of cheap seat finishes with the new supposedly identical sail. Near the end of the season we went back to the old jib and began to show our winning ways again. North is replacing that sail for free but it still talks about a process that is less than perfect.

Jeff

danaa · #3 (**permalink**) 03-03-2002

Check out the Feb 2002 issue of Sail Magazine. It covers this very topic and will be very helpful.