Rig numbers and letters on an MKII sail. Take your time...

thieuster

Active Member
After a handful of Radial sails over the last two years, this was the first time I did the numbers and letters on an MKII sail. '... and now for something completely different' to paraphrase Monty Python.

It took me well over 1.5 hours to get it all correctly attached. True, I also made two templates out of MDF; one the size of the letters and the numbers and one for the spacing. So that took some time as well. When using the templates (I used the size of the red '2' as a guide), I noticed that not all digits have the same size! E.g. the red 2 and the black 2 (we need that one too somewhere in the #) aren't the same: the black one is 5 mm wider!!

The sail is brand new and comes folded. The lines where the sail was (is) folded are more stubborn than the Radial sails and need a lot of attention to get them 'flat' when you stick on the rig's numbers! The shape of the sail with its numerous panels (and seams) makes it also more difficult, especially on the lowest part where the country code is put on layers of stitching! A lot of pressing with a c/card-like piece of plastic and a thingy we use for pressing the edges of wallpaper onto the wall (dunno its name in English) did the trick.

As said, this wasn't the first sail I did. Would this have been the first one, I would have become desperate at certain moments! Add to that the 30C temps currently outside, you can imagine that it was not the easiest job this day!

Menno
 
I just draw a pencil line parallel to the batten pockets and work one number at a time from the leech forward. Doesn't matter then if the individual numbers differ in width. Of course, attaching them on top of a seam or a crease neatly is a pain. The credit card sounds good :D

(This is actually something I have planned to do next week.)

_
 
Yes, I do the same thing with the pencil line. Tip: make sure to flatten the sail completely before measuring from the lower part of the batten pockets. 40 cm down with a raised crease halfway is not the same as 40 cm on a flat sail...

Then there's something odd. The 2018 handbook shows a diagram with a *) (asterix): the distance between the leech and the first digit is 10cm. The *) tells us that there's a 12 mm 'spare'. The instruction that came with the sail doesn't have the *) and only mentions '10 cm'.

And oh, the button is bright orange on this MKII (didn't know that - thought it was red)
 
The 2018 handbook shows a diagram with a *) (asterix): the distance between the leech and the first digit is 10cm. The *) tells us that there's a 12 mm 'spare'. The instruction that came with the sail doesn't have the *) and only mentions '10 cm'.
It should read "tolerance". The measurement is 100 mm +/- 12 mm.

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Yes, for 60 euros excl the 45 euro digits. And then to find out that the position of the digits is wrong - as happened in Aarhus and Kiel last year when more than 20 sailors unpacked their brand-new radial sail for the World Championships. Ever tried to get the digits N-E-D in Germany? Some even drove up to Denmark where D-E-N is an off the shelf item.

Menno
 

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