Frugal Sails

Article by Jerry Culik

How do you find a replacement sail for a good old boat that’s no longer in production? Or if you’re building a boat, where do you get the sail for it? Boat designers will always provide a set of dimensions of the sail plan, so the basic information is pretty easy to find. And if you can use a “stock” sail, you can probably save some money. Super Sailmakers has sails for O’Day, Catalina, Seaward and other small trailer-sailers; a ComPac 16 mainsail lists for $606, and a tanbark Peep Hen mainsail is $1,060. Intensity Sails sells “stock” sails for small racing dinghies (420; Day Sailer; Flying Scot; 29er). Mainsails list for about $400 and jibs for $300; a Sunfish “practice” sail sells for only $129.

If you’re building a kit boat, the kit maker can probably supply the sail as an option. Chesapeake Light Craft, for example, has “stock” lug, sloop, gaff, sprit, and lateen sails designed and built by Doug Fowler for all of their small sailboats. And just as you’d expect, the price scales with the sail’s area. A 31-SF “Mill Creek” lugsail starts at $395; a 62-SF lugsail lists for $650; and a “Pocketship” spinnaker sells for $985. Duckworks Boat Builders Supply has (and will hopefully continue to have…) a relationship with RSS (“Really Simple Sails”) to supply sails for many of Michael Storer’s boat plans. Prices start at about $309 for a small 35-SF “Canoe” sail; a 105-SF lug sail with three reefs designed for his “Goat Island Skiff” sells for $634. RSS can build sails for boats designed by John Welsford, Clint Chase, Francois Vivier, Jim Michalak, Dave Gentry, Ian Oughtred, and Phil Bolger (see Really Simple Sails). Josh Colvin, together with designer Brandon Davis, are launching a new company ("Kit Boats Co.") that will stock SCAMP sails, and hopefully the 100-SF lug sail with three reefs will continue to list for $769 (the Duckworks BBS price). They will also sell the boomless, fully-battened sails from Neil Pryde for the “Portage Pram” (45 SF, $310), the “Scout 10” (58 SF, $439) and the new “SCOUT 14” (70 SF, $549), which would also be an interesting sail for hotrodding a small dinghy. And they'll also supply the carbon fiber spars for them.

If you can’t find a stock sail, you don’t need to be a big-boat racer to get a “bespoke” sail that’s built just for your boat, sailing style, and wind conditions. And working with a sailmaker gives you flexibility in specifying the sailcloth, color(s), and options such as reef points and windows. I initially figured that small boat sailmakers are a dying breed. But I quickly found links to them (on Google Maps) in nearly every area of the country. And if you can’t find one locally, there are bigger sail lofts that have the tools and know-how to produce customized small boat sails. For example, consider Precision Sails, based in Vancouver, BC; and SLO Sail and Canvas in San Luis Obispo, CA. And although Evolution Sails is a New Zealand-based company, they have eight lofts located across the eastern and midwest United States.