We're capable of doing some basic stitching of sails, but I like to have a professional loft look my sails over after we've put a lot of miles on - and before we put a bunch more on.

This year we'd sailed from the Caribbean to the UK so I took our sails to Steve Goacher, close by Windemere and spent a morning with him and his staff. We looked at the two headsails first - which look to be in reasonable shape and some minor repairs are all that's called for.

Not so much the main! Steve inspected the seams closely and some had clearly begun to fail. Those that hadn't failed, he started to pick at with his thumbnail - and was basically able to break the stitching in many other areas. The cloth itself he felt was in reasonable shape (heavy Dacron).

In the end, I got an estimate to repair the sail, along with some proposals for a new sail altogether...
The repair estimate (£850) is about 25% of the new sail cost in similar material (9.46 Contender Fibrecon). (He also quoted in Hydranet 380 - which adds £2,000 to the bill...)
The current sails are only 5 years old, but have about 25,000 miles on them. They've been in the Caribbean for two winter seasons.
I've never much cared for the mainsail - the batten pockets and boxes are a lightweight design, tensioning the leech line is near impossible, and the sail had to be modified straight out of the box due to excessive roach, so the shape has always been a bit off...

We live on the boat full time and plan to do some pretty serious mileage in the coming years - down to Patagonia and then across the Pacific...

Like most, we're on a budget and a new main was not figured into it!

What would you do? Repair or new?

If new,
Is Goacher a reputable sailmaker?
Should I be getting other quotes - who from??
Thoughts about the two fabrics?


Appreciate your thoughts...

Bill Balme