How I made my own mainsail
It’s a 225-mile drive from our home in Nottingham to the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy where my wife, Debbie, and I keep Windhorse, our Ebbtide 33.
We are lifelong dinghy sailors, mostly inland, so how we came about buying Windhorse and sailing ‘big boats’ is a little convoluted. In a nutshell, though, we saw her for sale while sailing in the Fireball Nationals at WPNSA and have kept her there ever since. As you might imagine, this doesn’t work well for short visits and so I was pleased when one of our quick trips coincided with an event that the Weymouth and Portland Cruising Association had organised with Portland sailmaker Steve Moatt.
The evening visit to the sail loft was active, interesting and informative, with Steve introducing us to the benefits and drawbacks of the range of sail cloths and construction methods, as well as the technicalities of adding broad seam and luff curve to sails. At the end of the session, Steve surprised us all with an exciting offer: for someone to make a sail alongside him. He would demonstrate the processes and provide his facilities,
