Cruising Sails - Membranes, Laminates & Woven Fabrics. What to use?
Membranes, look cool and are the leading edge in technology, we love to sell them and see them on the water,
but we're good fellows and we have to give you the facts to help you make an informed decision on which optoin to go for.
Membrane sails are generally made from two films with fibres glued between them shapped into 3 or 4 seperate sections of a sail which
are then joined together to form a complete sail.
If you're after the latest in technology and for the cool factor then you can't go beyond a membrane sail.
One thing to note is that a sails performance is solely dependent on shape and stability.
It's now possible to achieve amazing stability with membrane sails, but their shape, because of thier construction, still lags behind radial sails made from laminates.
While many will claim that membrane sails are lighter, most of the time it's not the case.
In order to achive the stability most membrane sails are in fact heavier than a laminate sail.
This comes down to the fact that it's not possible to remove as much resin from the fabric with membrane production than a preproduced factory laminate fabric.
Greater resin means the fabric is stiffer, moer ridgid, heavier and more prone to breakage.
Laminates, are a pre produced fabric containing layers of film and fibres glued together and pressed through an indutrial rollers to squeeze out excess
glue to produce a continuous fabric which can be cut into segments to make a sail.
A Laminate is great in that there are a great variety of fibres available each with different properties to suit different size yachts.
We only use qaulity laminates produced in Germany, from
Dimension Polyant.
Laminates will hold their shape much longer than a woven product and are generally stronger than a membrane because of the manufacturing process.
Laminates really are a good comprimise between outright performance and longevity.
Laminate technology has improved greatly in the last few years and now with products like
GPL Light Skin Sport
it's turning the yacht sails market on its head with people demanding the toughness and price tag that comes from a laminate while getting the asthetics of a membrane.
Wovens, which are individual fibres woven together to form a continuous fabric can be cut into segments to make a sail.
When looking for longevity woven materials will out last any other and can easily be repaired no matter where in the world you are.
A woven fabric's downfall is that it will strecth and gradually loose it's shape, where as a membrane or laminate will fall apart instead.
A woven spectra, like hydranet is far stonger than a woven polyester such as dacron.
When crusing around the world there's no opton better than Hydranet because of it's shear toughness and servicablity.
If budget if your biggest concern then a tried and true dacron can't be beaten.