S
ail design has come a long way since I started Sanders Sails in 1975;
at that time all of our sails were cut on the floor with the assistance of
spikes, waxed twine and French chalk. The panel plans have also varied
with most of the earlier headsails being made with a “mitre”; this was the
standard panel plan for the previous 100 years and is something that we still
use today when the shape of the sail warrants it.
In the 70’s the most popular racing rule was “IOR” and the British Folkboat
Class decided to make their sail plan favourable under this rule. This meant
having shorter battens and a smaller roach than the Nordic sails to avoid
penalties, a Genoa with an LP of 150%, and a Spinnaker. The Nordic rig did
not concern itself with any rating system therefore the sail plan was more
suited to the yacht even though they did not include a Spinnaker in the
wardrobe. When the plastic Nordic Folkboat was first sold in this country
they decided to add the Spinnaker and Sanders Sails was selected as the
Sailmaker due to our success in the Class. The Spinnaker was exactly the
same size as the one we made for the British Folkboat which is why the Class
rules have a mix of Scandinavian methods of measurement (Main & Jib) and
IOR methods of measurement (Spinnaker).
On the water the British Folkboat sail plan was no match for the Nordic and
it was not long before owners of the British boats were looking to change to
this improved rig. In some instances this proved hard to achieve successfully
due to the position of the rigging but most “found a way”. The first British
Folkboat that we converted was Tom Husbands “Tomic” closely followed by
Malcolm Donald”s “Celia Mary”.
By the time the Nordic Folkboat had been introduced Sanders Sails were
fully computerised; not in a big way but instead of being covered with “chalk
dust” I had written a simple program that we ran on an Apricot computer.
This simple program provided a “VDC” (vertical distribution curve) which
meant that it did two things: a) It calculated how much seam shape was
required; and b) how this shape was distributed between the seams.
Although this was a giant leap for our Sail designs it still meant that we spent
most of the day on our knees therefore I “took the plunge” and purchased
the very latest sail design software which ran on a state of the art “Apple
Mackintosh” computer. The screen on this computer was only nine inches
wide but at the time it was the “Dog’s rowlocks”. We designed all of our sails
on this computer which provided a print out of each panel complete with
x and y plots that we transferred onto the sailcloth on a large table using
a large T square. This was very time consuming so we invested in our own
“pizza wheel cutter” which speeded up the process dramatically.
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THE HISTORY OF SANDERS SAILS
