I was cleaning up my gear after this weekend and noticed a glint of sunlight coming through the spinnaker as it hung to dry. It is not a completely through and through tear, but you can see where the fibers are pulling apart (looks to be stress related????, no signs of a snag or bunching like a rip induced separation) . It is in the middle of a panel and 7 inches long.
How best to repair? Patch, new panel, tape? Any such thing as sail warranty - used four times (ouch)...I'll call the sailmaker, as well.
I have excellent experience using spinnaker repair tape.
Make sure the surface is clean of sand and salt and tape it on both sides. If so then the tape would hold for ever. I think a roll of 10 mtr (30 yards) costed me 8 Euro's. Actaully I'm dispensing the stuff to several fellow clubmembers. It seems to work well for all of them.
Wouter
What you are describing Tom, could be a 'burn'. You'd expect to see some permanent bunching of the fabric around it though. These can happen if the retrieval line is pressed up tight against the cloth (such as while capsized) when you douse the spin. It is a good idea though to get a sailmaker's opinion as it could just as easily be a fabric fault.
And no matter why the fault is there, just tape it on both sides.
If it is a burn from the retrieval line, I have found that stripping the cover off the line for the last few feet minimizes the danger of this happening.
I'll tape it on both sides. I am planning on stripping the cover from the end of the retrieval line to the point that it goes under the tramp and starts to make the turn back above the tramp. It should be about 6 feet. Sound about the right amount to strip?
Ullman (Charlie O) thought it sounded like a burn, but has not actually seen it.
I am sure stripping instructions are on this site somewhere. I'll look.
Make sure to take away only the minimal required amount. The core is very slippery and you can't nearly pull as hard on the retrieval line when the stripped part is in your hands.
I have never stripped my retrieval line and I don't have burns in my spi. I don't know why but I don't seem to suffer any damages to my spi because of the retrieval line. I know many glass or carbon snuffer crews suffer from these around me but I, with my AHPC alu snuffer, simply don't have them. Maybe it is the way I snuff it ?
Wouter
Tom,
I think the reason for burns while snuffing is a function of several factors. Cloth, snuffer, retrival line, technique, friction from the halyard etc.
Spi cloth is probably a major factor, as we burnt some holes in our Ullman spi but never in our Gran Segel spi. Nothing else changed..
Switching snuffers improved the situation, and stripping the last feet of the cover helped also helped. But as Wouter said, pulling on the core is hard, it's slippery and you can cut/burn your hands. So remove as little as you can get away with of the cover, much better to err on the long side and repeat the process than to remove too much.
We have our snuffer on the port side of the pole, with the retrieval line going trough a ring (secured with a short, 3-4cm line to the patch before it is tied to a loop at the topmost patch). Snuffing on port side is a breeze, but it is a bit harder if we snuff on starboard. I guess the reason is that the halyard slides over lots of cloth before the spi-patches are close enough together to allow it to be pulled into the snuffer. With this setup we had lots of burns with soft and light spi-clots, but not the heavier more resin-rich cloth.
Humm, that could be it. When I order my spi I asked for the most basic and cheapest cloth. I got the option of lightweight or stirdy. I chose stirdy so I guess I'm sailing with a slightly heavier cloth. I wanted that as I rather be sailing with a spi for 4 years then finish 4 seconds faster for the first 10 races before it selfdestructs.
So yes. Maybe this is it.
Never lubricated that spi either.
Wouter