Hideko's Sail Loft
13 October 2007 | Martin's Marina
Randy
Hideko and I started working on our sail repair skills in earnest today. There's a great book, widely respected amongst the salty, called the Sailmaker's Apprentice. The book teaches you everything you could possibly want to know about sails, from rig and sail types, to sail shapes and sail construction. The first chapter is titled, "A Ditty Bag Apprenticeship", and takes you through the construction of a fairly complex ditty bag. We purchased the book as part of our library and planned to go through it together to develop some key cruising skills (neither of us have done much sowing historically...).
Before we left Fort Lauderdale Hideko and I bought ditty bag kits. Sailrite (located right around the block from Lauderdale Marine Center) puts kits together specifically for the Sailmaker's Apprentice text with all of the thread, cloth, grommets, wax, needles and other bits that you need.
We are using a large floor board to protect our table from pins, markers and whatnot. It became surplus when we installed the washer dryer and I almost threw it out, it is a rather heavy chunk of wood. Hideko talked me into keeping it and we have had it stashed under one of the quarter berths (wait that's mono hull lingo, well you know what I mean).
It is far too early to predict the results of this endeavor but the process has been very educational so far. We are learning the flat stitch, round stitch, sticking stitch and cross stitch, as well as how to finish eyes, grommets and cringles, among other more exotic rope and needle work. If you fancy upgrading your salt rating I highly recommend taking a look at Emiliano Marino's Sailmaker's Apprentice.