Mainsail Stack Pack is Done

This weekend I completed the last portion of the mainsail stack pack sail cover.

Wait... "stack pack" - what's that?

A stack pack is kind of like a basket - it captures the sail when it is dropped and keeps it from going all over the place.  Yes, lazy jacks do that too.  In fact a stack pack uses lazy jacks, but it also serves as a cover for the sail when it is not in use - there is a zipper along the top surface which closes the stack pack over the furled sail.

For our mainsail, the stack pack is 18' long - much, much too big to do the fabric lay out inside the boat - I did it on the finger pier next to us.  Because of the height of the sail when furled, the fabric wasn't wide enough so I had to splice a panel at the forward upper end of each side.  Somehow I managed to not take any pictures of the process.

Needs Viagra

When the sewing was completed, it needed to be fitted to the sail and boom.  This turned out to be a non-trivial task.  There is a lot of fabric, the sail is heavy, and there is lots of opportunity to get the straps that go under the sail hooked up to the wrong places.  It took me most of an entire afternoon to get to the point in this picture.

Next the lazy jacks needed to be disconnected from the boom and attached to the sail cover, and adjusted so that the (PVC pipe) battens formed a pleasant curve.  This required a ladder.

Finally, a piece of canvas (lined with sailcloth for added stiffness) needed to be cut to serve as the front cover.

Front cover pattern

I picked a day when it was sunny, warm, and calm (a rare event!) to make the pattern using Sailrite's Duraskrim (highly recommended!  In fact, Sailrite is highly recommended...)

Long time coming - done!

Then a morning of stitching on the Sailrite LSZ-1 produced the product.  Looks pretty sharp!  The stack pack also eliminates the 1-hour long procedure of reinstalling the old sail cover over the sail after arriving at the dock, and eliminates storage of that cover down below while we are off the dock... hooray!

Next on the agenda is a new cover for the staysail - the old one has shrunken to where it can't be made up over the sail anymore.

Mainsail Stack Pack is Done

Refuge

It was a blustery morning in Blind Bay - winds gusting to 17 kt out of the SW, and Eolian yawing back and forth on her anchor.  Our destination for the day was either Roche Harbor or Westcott Bay, depending...

Wasp Passage was even more blustery, with the wind changing from nearly zero up to 20 kt in the space of just a few feet, as it tested and found narrow little passages between the islands, or as the rotors formed by it skimming over the tops of the trees brushed the water.  Despite this, we did manage to get the mizzen up in a prolonged (ha!) calm spell.

But when we exited into San Juan Channel, we got the full brunt of it.  Given that the wind was forecast to be from the SW, and that we had indeed seen it from the SW in Blind Bay, I anticipated that we would have a reach (of some kind) in San Juan Channel, and indeed we did - 18 kt gusting into the high 20s, and not warm - temps in the 50s.  We raised the staysail which gave us a balanced rig, but Eolian seemed to be struggling some in the lulls.  So we put up the mainsail.  With this, we were making 5.5-6.5 kt thru the water - a comfortable speed.  But the mainsail added too much sail aft of the center of drag, and in the gusts Eolian wanted to round up - no, demanded to round up.  There was too much wind to fly the yankee, so we just tolerated the weather helm and proceeded up and into Spieden Channel.  In retrospect we should have dropped the mizzen - that would have moved the center of effort forward and paradoxically would have speeded us up, since I wouldn't have had to hold the rudder so far over to keep us off the wind and on course.

In the weird way of the winds in the San Juan Islands, when we entered Spieden Channel the wind veered around until we were sailing close hauled, at least part of the time.  We had to constantly fiddle with the sails between a beam reach, close reach, and close hauled tho our course remained constant at 270°.

Finally we reached the point where we could make the left turn into Roche Harbor.  Taking the sails down in that kind of wind is never easy, but we got it done.

Motoring into Roche Harbor, we continued to see wind speeds continuously in the 20s.  We toyed with the idea of just anchoring there - it had been a long, tiring day, and the attraction of being at anchor was powerful.  But Roche was not protected.  Tho there were no waves, the water was black with the wind everywhere.  This is where the 'depends...' came in.

We had talked about going to Westcott Bay or Garrison Bay as a destination this morning, and really, could it be any worse than Roche Harbor?  There should have been some protection from the contour of the land, and perhaps the wind would be thwarted some.  These bays are fairly large, but are shallow, meaning that anchorage available to Eolian would be limited.  And they are popular.  We had visited here one other time and the bays were packed shore to shore with boats.  Today however, there were no AIS signatures appearing in either bay.

Motoring directly into the teeth of the 25-30 kt wind howling down narrow, winding Mosquito Pass was not encouraging by any stretch.  I decided to give Westcott/Garrison a chance, but that we would probably have to turn around in there and go back to Roche.  At least that would be a downwind jaunt.

Miracle of miracles!  Almost as soon as we entered the narrow little cut into the twin bays, the wind dropped down to single digits -  I even think I heard angels singing...

We put the anchor down in the narrow channel of deep enough water in Westcott Bay, and began to unwind.  For us, today, Westcott Bay was the very definition of the word 'refuge'.

Ahhhh...

Refuge 

Actualization

As with many projects, the design and planning stages take longer than the actual execution.  Making a new sail cover for Eolian's mizzen was one of those projects.  I started thinking about this last summer, while hanging on the mizzen boom by one arm, way out past the stern rail, making up the fasteners on the far end of the sail cover.  I have been doing this acrobatic act for 20 years, but lately my shoulders have started to bother me, telling me that this process was going to have to change.  

Well finally last week everything came together and I was able to spend the time to put the plans and design to the test: actual sewing.

You really want to use a hot knife for this...

I unrolled the Sunbrella on the dock, laid out the pieces using a chalk line, and cut them out using my brand new, handy-dandy hot knife (you really want to use a hot knife for this work because it seals the edges of the cut, preventing unraveling).  The only tricky part of the layout was the placement of the cut outs on the side pieces for the lazy jacks.  To get these right, I tied the lazy jack lines to the boom at their design locations, and then stretched a tape measure along the diagonal that the top of the sail cover will make, taking the measurements where the diagonal intersected the jack lines.

Then the depth of the cut outs needed to be established.  I wanted them to be just deep enough so that the top of the cut out, which will be the bottom once the stitching to make the batten pocket is completed, would be just above that seam in the finished product.  Here's the detail on that:  I had determined that a 4.5" circumference would make a batten pocket large enough to accommodate the 3/4" schedule 40 PVC pipe that I was going to use as battens.  Adding a 1/2" seam allowance, I struck a "fold-to" line 5" away from the top edge of the side piece.  Then I laid out the cut outs so that their ends were 1/2" (seam allowance) + 3/8" (allowing for the edging to be applied to the cut outs) = 7/8" from the fold-to line.

The rest was just sewing.  The cover is just shy of 12 feet long, and there is no place inside Eolian to stretch it all the way out.  But sewing it over the saloon table worked out OK.

I mentioned that I used 3/4" sched 40 PVC pipe for the battens (the gray kind, rated for outdoor use).  PVC pipe comes in 10 foot lengths; the sail cover is just shy of 12 feet long...  a splice was necessary.  I didn't want to use a coupling, since that would make a lump that would make feeding the battens into the pockets difficult.  It turns out that 1/2" sched 40 pipe has an OD just slightly larger than the ID of 3/4" pipe.  So I bought a short length of 1/2" pipe, cut two 12" lengths, a slit one side of each piece lengthwise on my little table saw.  That 1/8" kerf provided just the right amount of clearance to allow the 1/2" pipe to telescope into the 3/4".  Assembling with pipe dope gave me a smooth splice.

Almost done...

I added ties that go under the sail using black Sunbrella webbing and Common Sense fasteners (not visible in this picture - they're on the other side). 

The top zipper would be impossible to operate if its aft end were not stabilized - a short strap there is seized to the topping lift line.  The finishing touch is a tiny block seized to the topping lift line just above the zipper seizing - and a 1/8" line loop routed thru the block and tied to the zipper pull allows the zipper to be operated while standing on the deck, not hanging over the rail.  Doing this work was interesting...  I had to swing the boom out over the dock and stand on top of a ladder to reach the aft end of the boom.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with closing off the aft end - I think I'll do nothing - the opening is not large enough to bother with. 

I still need to make a front panel that wraps around the mast - the zippers that will attach it to the sail cover are already installed on the sail cover.

And I haven't yet cut the lazy jack lines to length - I think I am going to fiddle with them a little more - I want to see how things settle in with some use.

Previous post in this series

Actualization

Still Thinking...

Design notes

For some reason which is obscure to me,when I am designing something, all my ideas and calculations end up on sticky notes.  This pile is right next to the laptop that I am typing on, right now.  Every design idea I have had on the new mizzen stack-pack is in that pile.  Scary, really.

But sticky notes are not the only tool I use.  For the layout on the fabric (and determining, therefore, how much fabric to order), I used LibreOffice's draw tool, with a scale of 1" = 1':

The order to Sailrite has been made (7 yd of the 46" wide Erin Green fabric, plus a whole bunch of notions: zippers, fasteners, etc). 

And delivered.

Now all I need to get going is weather decent enough to go out and lay out the cuts on the fabric... out on the dock.  Can't do it inside - the panels are 12 feet long.

Waiting for spring...

Still Thinking...

Stack Pack, Step I: Thinking

 It's cold outside.

Eolian sits in her slip, double-tied and with our additional "winter fenders" as prevention against the winter storms, with temperatures in the 20's, 30's and 40's and winds the same.  It is a time for dreaming, for planning.  (Well, except for the occasional repair, like the lazarette drainage problem which I'll write about some time...).

So what am I thinking about?  I'm designing, in my head, a stack pack sail cover for our mizzen.  I like to have the whole of a project firmly understood, run thru completely in my head...  before I start.  There are always surprises, but this minimizes them.

Why the sail cover?  First, our existing sail cover is shot.  It will make it thru this winter, but the next one is doubtful.  So some kind of sail cover is called for.  But why a stack pack?  I assure you, this not a fashion statement - there is a sound design reason.  Eolian's mizzen boom extends well beyond the stern rail:

Can you imagine putting on a conventional sail cover?  How would you do it?  Well, what this 69-year old man has to do is stand on the stern rail, wrap his right arm over the boom, and with only his left hand reach waaay out there to the end of the boom and single-handedly make up the three Common Sense fasteners on the cover at the end of the boom.  I haven't fallen in the water yet.  Yet.  But my right shoulder has been giving me some trouble of late, and so I can see the end of this procedure coming...  A stack pack solves the "dangling old man" problem.

A stack pack is supported by lazy jacks, which I installed last fall as the first step in this process.  This brings us to the first design issue:  how to actually support the cover with the lazy jack lines.  You might think that this was a "solved" problem.  Not so, by any means.  A walk down E dock showed this:

1. Lazy jacks attached to short straps sewn to the cover

2. Lazy jacks attached directly to the batten thru a grommet in the cover.  Note that there is no provision for adjustment of the lazy jack leg length

3. Openings cut in the batten support tube and lazy jacks tied to the batten

4. Lazy jacks attached to full-length straps sewn to the cover

All of these sail covers were professionally made; all are different.  In each case, I find something that is objectionable:

• Two sail covers, examples 1 and 4, have the jack lines attach to straps;  the batten provides no vertical support.  Consequently the cover "drapes" around the straps.  Example 4 provides far better support for the cover fabric than does example 1.
• Example 2 has the jack lines supporting the batten directly, but because of the single grommet hole, there is only a line entry.  I conclude that the line is terminated on the batten internally.  That must mean that there is no provision for adjustment of the jack line lengths.
• Example 3 also has the jack line support going directly to the batten.  In this case, the lines are tied around the batten which gives good shape to the cover (as in example 2).  However, all jack lines have a forward component to their pull.  As you can see, this has caused the attachment to slide forward against the opening of the fabric and will eventually cause a chafing problem there.

I have decided to use a variation of example 3.  In my case, I will drill a hole in the batten (sched 40 PVC pipe), and pass the jack line end thru that hole.  This fixes its location on the batten and yet provides for adjustment of the jack line length.

In order to make those openings in the cover to admit the jack lines, I will make the cover sides of two pieces of fabric: a side and a top.  If it were a single piece, sewn to make a loop or pocket for the batten (as for example, in the Sailrite design), cutting and finishing the openings out in the middle of a large piece of fabric would be very difficult.  In addition, if the top edge of the sail cover is to have any curve at all (a curved sheer is always more graceful than a straight one...), then the side of the cover and the top must be made of two separate pieces of fabric.

I think I have the seaming details worked out:

• Cut out the fabric pieces, and then for each side of the cover:
• Cut out the jack line openings in the top edge of the side piece.
• Apply finishing binding to the edges of the cut out openings
• Sew the top surface to the side surface at the top edges, wrong sides together
• Make a loop or pocket with the stitched seam folding it back against the side piece, leaving sufficient room to slide in the batten pipe.  Stitch it down.
• Done properly, this should provide lazy jack openings which are finished on all but the bottom edge; the bottom edge is formed by the seam between the side and the top.

See what I mean by "thinking it out?"

OK, now I have to think about the forward and aft ends of the cover and what they will look like...

Stack Pack, Step I: Thinking

A Plea For Help

Eolian is a ketch.  And her mizzen boom extends out considerably beyond the stern rail.  As you might expect, this makes putting the sail cover on the mizzen rather a difficult proposition.

For 19 years I have been standing on the stern bulwark, draping my right arm over the boom and inching my way out until my body is at nearly a 45° angle.  Then, using only my left hand, I have to make up the common sense fasteners at the end of the sail cover.  Not exactly the safest thing I could do.

And now, arthritis in my right shoulder is making that a painful activity as well, as you might imagine.  Combine this with the fact that besides me, the mizzen sail cover is also old and rapidly failing (will it survive the storms of winter?  Who knows?), and well it is obvious that something needs to be done.

It's new sail cover time.

And in the intervening 30 (40?) years since that sail cover was made, a new idea has appeared:  the Stack-pack sail cover.  It really is a new idea, and like all new ideas, there are still some kinks to be worked out in the design, for instance where the cover wraps around the mast.  A walk around the marina will show you that there are multiple ways to create a stack-pack cover, and that standardization has yet to occur.

Flush with my recent success with creating new roof panels for our bimini and dodger, I am going to tackle making a stack-pack cover for our mizzen.  But before I start a project like this, I need to have the whole design in my head.  And I am not there yet.

For me, the critical part of the design is the attachment of the lazy jacks to the cover.  Should there be straps that they tie to?  I've seen several like that, including the custom one that Ullman Sails made for the Sun Deehr 56 across the dock from us.  Wouldn't the design be stronger if the straps somehow wrapped around or supported the battens?  How to actually do that?  Should the batten be at the highest point of the side of the cover? Or down the side a little like on the Ullman cover?  If I support the sail cover with webbing wrapped around the batten, won't it naturally try to be the highest point of the cover?  See, my concept of the stack-pack is that the lazy jacks, the battens and the webbing form a framework, and that the fabric is just a cover for the framework.

Sailrite, my go-to gurus for marine canvas, have a video up covering construction of a stack-pack, but it appears that it was their initial design that they documented in the video.  Their lazy jack attachment was made by burning holes in the fabric and tying the lazy jacks thru them around the batten.  That satisfies my desire to have the lazy jacks support the batten, but seems unnecessarily crude.  And there is nothing to keep the lazy jacks from creeping up along the batten until they are at the upper edge of the burned holes in the fabric, and then pulling on the fabric, making wrinkles.

So.  This is a plea for help. 

I can't start the project until I solve this dilemma.  If anyone of my readers has a stack-pack sail cover that addresses this, or better yet has constructed a sail cover that addresses this, I'd love to see pictures of how it was made, in particular how lazy jack attachment and batten support were done.

Anyone?

A Plea For Help

Shape shifting success

Finally: a decent shape

It appears, to me at least, that the effort to remove the excessive draft from the mizzen was successful!   For the first time, the mizzen is pulling while sailing upwind with the main hoisted.  Previously, it was so baggy that it was worthless unless I dropped the main.  And since that would only happen in a blow, when a sail with huge draft is just what you don't want, the sail was previously pretty much a waste.

Also, removing the 7" from the leech has the boom pretty much horizontal, which improves the aethestics of Eolian quite a bit.

Shape shifting success

Shape changing

Eolian's masts are canted aft.  This means that, if the booms are to be aesthetically and pleasingly level, the angles between the foot and the luff of the main and mizzen sails must be less than 90°.  Our mainsail was correctly built, but the mizzen was not.  Whether it was incorrectly built for the boat (unlikely), or it was an adapted mainsail (more likely), the cut of the mizzen sail was such that the boom drooped.

Further, flying where it does in the dirty air behind the main, the mizzen needs to have less draft than the mainsail so that it will fill properly.  In another indication that our mizzen is a re-purposed mainsail, it had a lot of draft.

One of the reasons for our acquisition of our Sailrite LSZ-1 was to reshape the mizzen.  And in particular the "Z" part, since this model does the zig-zag stitching that sails use.  So, an afternoon's project: recut the mizzen.

Before removing the sail from the boat, I measured (using a steel, non-stretchy tape measure) the leech of the sail when sheeted in.  Then I raised the boom to where I thought it should be and remeasured the leech.  The difference was about 7".

Next, with the sail on the floor at our cabin, I arranged it so that I could take a wedge-shaped piece of cloth out of the lowest seam, one that had no "complications", like a batten pocket or a second clew for reefing.  This was non-trivial - even tho it is a mizzen, the sail is pretty big, with a luff of 32 feet and a foot of 11 feet.  It just barely fit on the floor, with all the furniture moved away.

Tight squeeze

Next, I struck a chalk line from where that first seam met the luff to a point 7" below where it ended on the leech.  Then with the reference mark in place, I took apart the triple-stitched seam.

No going back now.

Then, allowing a 1" seam allowance, I trimmed away the long wedge-shaped piece of cloth from the lower panel.

Now all I had to do was put it back together.  My first attempt failed.  I simply could not manage all that cloth and keep the seam lined up.

A cloth management problem

So I ripped out my first attempt and I got out my sticky basting tape and stuck the seam together with it.  This is not the crap they sell in sewing notion stores, the stuff that is designed to wash out.  This is 3M stuff I got from Sailrite - it holds like, um, glue.

And this time I spent more time to carefully line things up.  I found that the draft in the sail was created on the bottom of the upper panel - the top of the bottom panel (to the right in the pictures) had been straight, and remained so since I used the chalk line.  But when lining things up with the basting tape, I did not honor the 1" seam allowance I had granted myself, since that would have recreated the draft.  Instead I just pulled the seam straight.  In the center of the sail, it turned out that I had 2.5" of seam.

The only tricky part was at the leech, where I had to be very careful to handle the triple-folded surface and keep the leech line from getting sewed in place.  Well that's not quite true.  Managing all that cloth is a real problem.  You can see that my carefully-flaked upper portion of the sail did not long survive.  It is important to allow the sewing machine to move the fabric, and that requires two handlers, one on each side of the seam, to keep a little slack in front of the presser foot, and to move the sewed section away from the back of the presser foot.  The sail is heavy and bulky; keeping that little bit of slack was not easy.

I triple-stitched the seam using Helios thread.  I see no reason to use anything but the lifetime-guaranteed teflon thread for any kind of outdoor work.

With the sail back on the boat, the boom hangs where I had hoped, and the sail is a lot flatter.  Now all I need is for the seasons to advance enough to take it out on the Sound and see how it looks when it is full of wind...

Shape changing

Where do *you* do it?

No, not that.  This is a family-oriented blog (shame on you for what you were thinking).

Where do you work on your sails?  Because of the proportions of boat and sail which have been fixed by time-tested rules, it is a truism that the foresail will be much too big to fit on the deck, regardless of the size of the boat.  So, if you had to work on your foresail, where would you do it?

For us, the answer is some clean grass - grass not recently cut (and therefore littered with clippings) and free of dog-exhaust.  Admittedly, this is not always easy to find.  Yet, because we had to have our foresail off of the boat for our just-completed haulout, this weekend was the perfect time to find some clean grass and go after the algae and mildew growing on the sunshield, and to do some minor repair.

Here, Jane is taking her turn at playing seamstress, while I am taking pictures instead of  getting out the vinegar and starting to work on the sunshield.  (Non-sailors:  when the sail is rolled up on the forestay, that green border is all that is exposed - it's there to shield the sail from UV-deterioration.  And to provide a home for wayward algae.)

White vinegar is an excellent treatment for algae and mildew.  Being a 5% solution of acetic acid in water, the pH is low enough to kill off the single-celled life forms, and yet it is weak enough to cause no harm to the fabric.  Bonus:  both the water and the vinegar eventually evaporate - no rinsing is required.

To prevent colonized algae and mildew from surviving the onslaught of the vinegar by sacrificing their outer members to protect those inside, it is good to break up the colonies while doing the vinegar treatment.  I used a small brush, originally designed to strip cornsilk off of raw corn-on-the-cob - it is soft enough to be kind to the fabric and the thread, yet it does yeoman duty in destroying colonies (look for one in your grocery store).

Where do *you* do it?