Submitted on November 14, 2003 by Jeff Barrett

Question: I was interested in, and impressed by, Dan Neri's recent article in
Cruising World, as well as his input on sails just run in Practical Sailor. I own an Ericson 35 Mk III that is raced around the buoys a bit, cruised with the family a lot. We plan a one year trip to Mexico in a year.

My interest in performance suggests I am a candidate for a set of Marathon 3DL sails, but I have read elsewhere that laminated sails in general, and high end laminated sails in particular, are of limited value in boats less than 40 feet LOA, and not really of full benefit until LOA exceeds 50 feet. This sentiment seems especially true for the mainsail, with more divergence of opinion on the jib/genoa. Any thoughts on this? If laminates have some value for a 35 foot boat, but less than for larger boats, then is a simple polyester laminate, like Soft Norlam, more appropriate than a Spectra laminate or Marathon 3DL?

Thanks in advance for your time.

Jeff Barrett

Answer: Hi Jeff,

I can see the logic in the statement about Marathon sails or high modulus
laminated sails having more benefit for larger boats. The bigger the boat,
the more load on the sails and the greater the potential weight savings in absolute terms. However, righting moment goes up exponetially with length. In other words, the smaller the boat, the more tippy it is. For that reason, you could argue that sails that stay flat and well shaped will make a more noticable differance on a smaller boat. Sails that stretch less will make the boat heel less. Its a tough subject to adress since the differances between dacron, laminated polyester, spectra or Marathon are shades of grey, not black and white. There are lots of opinions and none of them are absolutely right or wrong.

Your boat has a very tall and narrow mainsail and a big headsail. The first thing you need to determine is how large your primary headsail will be. If you can get away with a small LP sail- like about 120%- in light air, then you will obviously have a higher wind speed cross over to a heavy air headsail. With a 120% headsail set up for roller reefing, you might find that in a cruising context you reef the mainsail with the wind forward of the beam at about 15-17 knots. Next you would roller reef the headsail to bring the head of the reefed jib even with the reefed mainsail. The second reef might go in at about 20-22 knots and then the headsail will be rolled all the way to the front of the track. At that point your boat will sail much better with a heavy air jib, but hopefully you won't be going in that direction, in that wind speed, for long enough to warrant the change.

When the boat is reefed, the Marathon sails will look better than any other type of construction. The differance between the shapeholding of Marathon construction and SNL has more to do with the 3DL fiber structure than it does with the type of fiber used. This is especially true when reefed because the Marathon sails have fiber structure orienting from the reefed corners and extending all the way across the surface of the sail.

A laminated, polyester fiber main and headsail, like Norths SNL line will be close to the shape of Marathon sails for your 35' boat and that product might probably represents the best compromise of price, durability and performance. The extra modulus of Spectra is not going to be much of a benefit for your boat. At the other end of the spectrum, you might be disappointed in the shapeholding properties of dacron construction, especially in the headsail.

Regards,
Dan Neri

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