Genoa repair #1

The obvious damage occurred when the UV strip caught on the starboard spreader and pulled out about 8" of stitching



Less obvious, and hardly visible in the photo, is that the stiching on the next seam in is also fraying and falling apart in way of the spreaders and in several other places around the UV strip. The sail itself seems OK which is a relief.

The edge of the UV strip at this location has frayed away to nothing at all - obviously over a significant period of time, this isn't damage that has occurred quickly in the relatively few hours we've had this sail up so far. This left it very vulnerable to hanging up on the spreader.

In fact, it getting caught and ripped off has done us a favour - the edge of the sail itself is intact and hasn't started to wear away.

Step 1 is to secure the ends of the original stitching where it is still intact and re-sew the areas where it has pulled out completely. This was relatively easy, just sew through the existing holes in the sailcloth and UV strip.

A couple of hours later and hey presto ...

Now the frayed edge that led to the sail catching on the spreaders is all too obvious.

Tomorrow I plan to glue and sew a patch over the edge of the sail using a piece of material cut out of the hat band of a cheap floppy hat. It's the slipperiest piece of hopefully hard wearing polyester cloth I could find.

Then I'll go over all the stiching on the sail mending where necessary.

The entire UV strip really needs to be replaced. This will probably cost around £120 to £150 which is an expense we don't need right now. It's definitely on the essential works list for the coming winter though.