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August 2, 2010
FOILFEED; A REAL LUFF TAPE IMPROVEMENT
 Are you tired of your bow man taking forever to get you jib in your foil? Tired of having to burn off the top of the luff tape to get it into the feeder? Did you ever have the entire luff of a jib pull out of its foil?
If your answer to any of these questions was "yes", perhaps you should consider adding a Foilfeed to the top of your jibs.
Foilfeed, pictured above, is a molded nylon more |
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August 2, 2010
A GOOD HEAVY WEATHER RIG FOR CRUISERS
 Like the boat pictured below, many cruising boats have a roller furling genoa as their primary headsail. This works fine until the wind starts to blow hard and then the combination of too much sail and not enough crew can make things difficult and unpleasant.
Getting rid of the big genoa is usually easy thanks to roller furling but what do you do then? Changing sails on the furling unit is more |
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September 16, 2009
Preventative Maintenance 101: Exposed Webbings and Stitching
 In the December '07 UK-Halsey Newsletter, we called attention to the fact that the stitching and webbing at the head and tack of furling genoas and at clew of furling mainsails is exposed to sunlight all the time. The result of this exposure is a dramatic deterioration in strength. Unfortunately, this loss of strength is virtually invisible to the eye and usually only shows up when the stitching o more |
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August 11, 2009
UK-HALSEY TO THE RESCUE OF ROLLER/FURLING MAINSAILS
 ARE YOU TIRED OF SAILING AROUND WITH A MAINSAIL THAT IS SO SMALL, IT LOOKS LIKE IT'S REEFED?
DO WANT THE PERFORMANCE OF A NORMAL, FULL-SIZED SAIL AND THE
CONVENIENCE OF IN-MAST FURLING?
If your answer to these questions is "YES", UK-Halsey has the solution;
AIR BATTENS
With an AIR BATTEN system, you can have all the area of a normal mainsail without giving up your f more |
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June 19, 2008
STOP SINGING THE BLOWN-OUT-SAIL BLUES
 One of the reasons sailors don’t like heavy air sailing is that heeling excessively is uncomfortable. Boats with old sails end up heeling more than boats with new sails because sails stretch and distort as they get older. The distortion gets exaggerated as the wind builds. Baggy sails create more heeling force than flat sails do. The top picture shows a well-shaped Tape-Drive sail and below is a b more |
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April 29, 2008
NEWEST SAFETY AT SEA VIDEO POSTED: FIGHTING SHIPBOARD FIRES
 The United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, continues to set the bar higher and higher for safety at sea training. In early April they ran their second hands on seminar where 140 sailors took the helm during crew overboard exercises with a real person in the water, shot off flares and fire extinguishers, inflated life rafts and climbed in from the water in fu more |
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April 29, 2008
ATTENTION CRUISING SAILORS: VERTICAL BATTENS MAINS ARE A TREMENDOUS UPGRADE.
 For decades, boats with in-mast furling mains have been sailing around with under performing sails. These hollow-roach sails are starved for power and the boats end up with leeward helm since the mainsail is too small to balance the genoa. BUT, the roller-furling mains are convenient for setting and stowing the mainsail.
Now sailors with roller-furling more |
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February 1, 2008
UK-HALSEY’S SAILCARE SERIES: LEARNING PROPER GENOA LEAD POSITION
 To make your genoa pull better and last longer, position the genoa lead block properly. As the photos show, too many sailors sail around the with the lead block too far aft. As a result, the top of their genoa flaps in the breeze and flogging is a sail’s worse enemy. The fore and aft position of the lead block affects the tension on the leech and foot, which in turn helps you trim the top and the more |
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January 11, 2008
CRUISING SAILORS: BEWARE OF EXPOSED CLEW WEBBING
 More and more cruising sailboats are being delivered with roller furling mains and jibs. The usual method for attaching the head and tack of these furling sails to the roller unit is a webbing loop. Likewise at the clew, clew blocks, stainless rings or other hardware are attached with webbing that is passed through the hardware and then sewn down to both sides of the sail. The adjacent pictu more |
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January 10, 2008
LEECH LINES AND LONGEVITY
 All sails today come equipped with leech lines or cords that enable sailors to stop that annoying flutter between the batten pockets on your mainsail or up the entire leech of your genoa. This flutter usually gets more pronounced as the wind increases and in some cases can get so noisy, it becomes difficult to hear anything else
In the days of Dacron sails, adjusting the leech line was a ma more |
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July 28, 2006
TIPS FOR MAKING YOUR SAILS LAST LONGERSAIL SUN SCREEN
Always make sure to roll your genoa with the UV protection cover on the outside. If the sail gets rolled up with the acrylic cover on the inside, the sun will cook the leech of your genoa.
If your main does not roll into the mast, make sure to put the sail cover on when the sail is down. The leech (back edge) of any sail carries the highest load, more |
