"....Clean, white dacron sails are !NOT! necessarily good sails.
"Dirt doesn't help a dacron sail work better but pure white won't either (even though it LOOKS better).
"Good dacron sails are stiff and have a crinkly sound a little like aluminum foil.
"Old, blown (stretched) dacron sails aren't safe; they're well on the way to becoming as soft as unstarched shirts, baggy, and they can only be forced into a reasonable shape in light winds. When they've lost their strength, in moderate or higher winds they'll continue stretching badly and uncontrollably. This forces you to sail farther off the wind and creates far greater heel, much more difficulty controlling the boat or making progress to windward, and is usually distinctly unsafe and uncomfortable.
"Be careful about accepting "renewing" processes as providing "like new" dacron sails; they cannot. The fibers in the usual dacron sail cloth -- and the resin that binds them -- !BOTH! are needed to give the sail its strength and its shape.
"In the better renewing processes, new resin replaces some of that resin lost through use so it restores some strength. BUT IT CAN'T RENEW THE DACRON FIBERS. In old, blown sails, most of those fibers have stretched so much (like some old rubber bands) that they have lost their elasticity and most of their ability to recover from being stretched. They stretch and stay stretched.
"'Renewed' sails are much cleaner, whiter, and sometimes are recut and re-sewn to a better shape. Some even simulate that "like new" crinkly sound. The better renewal methods can provide a great improvement when sailing in light wind conditions. However, when "renewed" sails are used in moderate or heavy winds, as the fibers stretch, quickly the new resin breaks its binding to them, the "tired" fibers stretch, and the sail rapidly becomes baggy and blown-out again.
"Plastic surgery, medications, joint replacements, etc., might make a 75 year old man look, feel, and even -- for brief times -- function almost like one years younger. But would you expect him to be able to do the hard, sustained work that a well conditioned younger man in his prime can do -- or have the expected longevity of the younger man?
"'Renewed' sails are similar and follow those annoying rules of reality: there is no alchemist's magic to cheaply turn lead into gold; there are no perpetual motion machines; there is no free lunch; there is no something for nothing; there is no process that takes the old and worn-out and makes it like new again.
"Have an expert racing skipper help you evaluate the sails or better yet, have a sailmaker look at them.
"If you can't, a fairly quick but crude test is to tie one corner to a telephone pole and have 2 people pull hard on the other 2 corners of the sail (mains and jibs, but not spinnakers) so the sail is stretched flat, parallel to the ground.
"Check for how much belly there is in the sail; for every 10' of sail that would be parallel to the water (or boom), the belly or draft should NOT exceed 1 foot (i.e., 8" or less at 7'; or 6" or less at 5'; etc.). The more it does, the more it's very suspect so be sure to ask a sailmaker's opinion of that sail...."
Sail Care Inc -- Steve Howard -- 5/10/03 4:25a.m.
Money wasted, IMO -- Bob Pr., S2 6.7 #81 "The TARDIS" Topeka, KS -- 5/10/03 8:26a.m.