Building a sail

dylanwinter

dylanwinter

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www.keepturningleft.co.uk
I have often thought that making sails cannot be that hard

yesterday I drove up to Jeckells and spent the day watching them 'build' a new genoa for Harmony

now that I have watched it being made I realise that making a sail requires one heck of a lot of skill

It is the first new sail I have bought since I raced GP14s four decades ago

at one time 150 people worked in the jeckells sail loft - now there are ten people in there

and they produce as many sails as the 150 once did

amazing


 
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dylanwinter said:
at one time 150 people worked in the jeckells sail loft - now there are ten people in there
Click to expand...

I was sailing a boat with a Mirror rig last week. The sail number is in the 40,000s, and that's only about halfway through the Jeckells OEM run. 80,000 Mirrors over twenty years or so - 4,000 mainsails per year, 20 per working day. Ish.
 
JumbleDuck said:
I was sailing a boat with a Mirror rig last week. The sail number is in the 40,000s, and that's only about halfway through the Jeckells OEM run. 80,000 Mirrors over twenty years or so - 4,000 mainsails per year, 20 per working day. Ish.
Click to expand...

at that time they would lay down several layers of cloth and cut lots of sails at once

now they do it one layer at a time with the lazer cutter

in some ways each sail is bespoke

D
 
I enjoyed that a great deal, thanks.

I had a sail made last year, by a small loft. It felt a bit like (I imagine) having a Saville Row suit made. Sailmaker said there was 3 1/2 days work in it and he had it ready within the week.

If we don't use them they will be gone.
 
sailorman said:
do they use a programme to build in the shape / camber
Click to expand...

they can tweak it on the computer

it looks like a fairly old programme but I guess that does not matter

David on the cutter said that the computer always surprisies him as it seems to cut things out in a different way each time.

he has been there 40 years and the job is l;ess skilled than it used to be - but he said that the sails are never wrong

in the past they used to have sails returned for re-cutting all the time.

He started with hand shears and has some magnificent calouses on his knuckles

when he lifts up the sections you can see him placing them so that the warp and weft is aligned correctly

the other thing he does is when he tapes the two sections together is to align them correctly because they are different lengths

he absorbs about a two inch difference between panels by applying just a tiny bit of stretch to the cloth

I asked Anie is her hands get tiored and she says that they do - I asked her to squeeze my fingers - she has a grasp like a mole grip

it was a brilliant day

the deal with Jeckells is that I paid for the cloth and they paid for the labour in return for my labour as a cameraman

I will edit a three minute buit cut to music starting with dropping the old knackered genoa on katie L and then following the sail through to raising a new red one and a series of shots of it working

you know the sort of thing - bashing into waves around cape Wrath, sliding into a tiny scottish anchorage, unfurling against a lovely sunrise.

I will not have it made in time for Soton but is should be there on the stand in London

D
 
sailorman said:
do they offer other than cross cut
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I assume that they can make anything

the loft was full of spinnakers, some weird see through fabic sails, lots of dingy sails for a type I had never come across

the still do a lot of broads boat sails - and they are cut in all sorts of crazy directions

the broads sailors who race take their sails very seriously

I had always thought of Jeckells as makers of sails for broads boats and the odd trad dinghy

while I was there you might see some weird colours being moved around - they are were doing a rusgh job of sun awnings for a party venue in London.

some of the staff were in at 5.00 that morning

i am very excited about seeing what it looks like

I have a new respect for the sailmakers art
 
doug748 said:
I enjoyed that a great deal, thanks.

I had a sail made last year, by a small loft. It felt a bit like (I imagine) having a Saville Row suit made. Sailmaker said there was 3 1/2 days work in it and he had it ready within the week.

If we don't use them they will be gone.
Click to expand...

That's why I always give my custom to a smallish sailmaker (Nicolson-Hughes) on the Clyde.
 
Bet you'll never be able to fold it that small again!

When I'm returning a sail for cleaning and service, no matter how I try it's always a squeeze to get it into the bag. When it comes back from the loft it seems to fill only about half the bag.

Had a Jeckells x-cut on my Twister. Lovely sail.
 
It is heart-warming to see people work like that. Actually building something. And then knowing/imagining what the sail will "do" in its life...

Thanks Dylan. I hope that will go up in your collection of documentaries of boating and coastal activities around the UK at the start of the third millennium AD.
 
Great video, Jeckells certainly make them to last. I have an old Nipper dinghy, that has been in the family from new and I believe built in 1955, still with its original Jeckells sails. The main is a bit discoloured and some stains from careless storage but still very usable. The jib has been patched where it has been allowed to flog against the mast over the years, but for 59 years old not doing badly.
 
slammed together

136069 said:
Very interesting video - great work once again Dylan!
Click to expand...

it was slammed together from bloomin hours of rushes

I had one camera locked off on the gallery over the top of the sail loft while I shot the low stuff on the big camera

the light was a swine because there are overhead skylights with blue tinged natural light coming in and then electric lights with yellow tinge and the sun kept on coming and going as a series of showers swept through

making the final film will take ages of sitting at the desk late at night drinking whisky and trying to make the red coklour look the same all the way through

but I wanted to turn it around fairly fast because I am running out of time before the sail drags us to Scotland

(weather man is talking of a high building for next weekend - fingers crossed)

it is funny how many memories the Jeckells name has stirred up among sailors - and in me

but the company has clearly moved on from churning out thousands of Mirror sails

the Pardy's always use their sails

http://www.landlpardey.com/

and Dave Kay's brother used them for his long sail to New Zealand - and says that they lasted very well

I guess until some-one on here suggested that I contact them I had always thought of them as trad dinghy sail makers rather than cruising or racing sail makers but there were lots of almost see through high tec dinghy sails and some massive big boat racing sails around the loft.

My dad was a tailor so the big room with rolls of material, bins of offcuts, massive scizzors and the constant bur of industrial sewing machines was all very familiar

I did ask them how many Centaur genoas they had made over the years - "hundreds" was the answer.
 
Can you enlighten us on the area and spec. of the new sail.The Centaur data suggests a huge jump from a full genoa to a no.1 jib ?
 
Dylan
Thread drift
What way will you be going from Solent?
Clockwise or anti clockwise
Or should I just use my noddle & guess - turn left

I am off on my second circumnavigation as soon as the weather changes & will go clockwise- as before
When I tell people, the first question they ask is " will you go the other way this time?"
 
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