16/05/2025
It's been a while between posts with plenty going on with sails, covers and most importantly sailing.
This post is in reference to what you get when you buy on price alone.
Today's job was to replace a completely rotten UV strip on a furling genoa for a reasonably large boat. The current owner of the boat is not the one that purchased this sail new but he is having to deal with it.
Now a rotten uv strip is pretty standard up here and it's a routine job to replace them but this one was different. The sail is stiff, like new stiff. Has bu**er all creases in it and no mould etc which is what you would expect for a sail that needs the uv strip replaced. A bit of further investigation of the sail revealed that it was built in Dec 2022! So after 2.5 years whatever material had been used as a uv strip was completely perished. And this is the problem. The sail would be expected to last 10+ years and over its life get probably 2 uv strip's. So why would anyone spec a sail with such poor uv protection? Cost is why. The ability to get a cheaper quote to a customer by using inferior products.
So I replaced the uv strip but another thing struck me as odd about this sail. One of the panel had noticeably more white creases in it than any other panel in the sail. I quickly realised that the panel in question was a completly different Dacron! There is simply no reason on a crosscut Dacron furling headsail as to why you would make the 3rd panel from the foot a different material to the rest of the sail. I guess they didn't have enough of the quoted material and used something else as a substitute.
So not only was the uv strip made from incorrect material, the sail has also been made from different materials. 🤦♂️
So this is just a heads up that when a sail is bought online at a cheap price, you never really know what your getting.
