rolling sails

Do you fold your sail in half lengthwise before rolling?

No, why would you do that?

Surely defeats the purpose of rolling it.

By folding it by a third, the head ends up near the end of the roll and not quite so tightly balled up.

Agreed. I fold it down past the first batten and then roll. Less rolling, and the top of the sail isn't so tightly rolled up.

That's why.

I've seen guys use large PVC tube to help make the rolling easier. Then they put the whole kit in a long sausage shaped bag. Not me, I just wad my shit up and hide it under the deck cover.... then wonder why I'm slow and my sail looks like crap...

I take it you mean that you horizontally fold the top third, then roll it all. I have a plastic drainpipe and roll my new sail around this with no folds. If you fold the top of the sail, doesn't that create a horizontal crease, and wouldn't that affect the airflow?

Also do you guys take the battens out before rolling?

I roll mine around a drain pipe. I've found that rolling it from the top is much harder then rolling it from the bottom. I tie clew and cunningham to the drain pipe and then roll from the bottom. Works for me.

nutzuns said:

Also do you guys take the battens out before rolling?

Click to expand...

No need if you roll perpendicular to the leech. Then all the battens are parallel to the roll. For folks who fold once across the sail, you fold the head to the clew.

Cheers,

Geoff S.

is there a standard (good) way of folding or rolling the sail before you store it? Mark

I've just been rolling mine from the top down the leech. But every once in a while it seems the top is twisted relative to the bottom. I thought I just wasn't careful with setting it up. Could it be I'm putting too much curl in the very top?

I folded my enterprise sails down the middle and it left a BIG crease where the fold was, it took ages to come out with a lot of sail tension!

I have been taking the mast out of the boat, slide the bottom section out of the sleeve, loosely fold the sail in half at the lower end of the top section and then I neatly and loosely roll it around the mast top section.
The nice thing about this is that it only takes about 2 minutes to set up and get sailing and when I'm not sailing the sail is easily kept out of the sun.

Recreational sailor

The last time I had a new Laser sail (1981?) I rolled it on a tube. I folded it in half, head to clew, and also used a smaller tube where I folded it. This kept the upper crease from happening.

I fold

I roll around a 4" PVC drainpipe. I tie the clew to the pipe, start rolling the clew until the pipe is parallel to the seams, then roll the sail. This way, I can leave the battens in.

Long ago, when I sailed a Cyclone, I would roll the sail starting at the head, and not use a tube. Easier, but with no support in the sail, it was much easier to crease - defeating the purpose.