20250420

A new sail for Hatseflats

Marten-Jan Giesing of Oars en Sail made a new sail for Hatseflats. It is identical to the Minahouet sails used by Joost and Sebastiaan on their new Silmarils. The new sail is both bigger (10m2 compared to 8.5m2) and fuller than the Tirrik sail.

Joost already indicated that the spars are quite a bit longer. I bought two anodized 50x2.5mm alloy tubes from Aluparts.nl for the yard and boom and shortened each to 350cm during the Easter weekend.

I minimised the need for fittings. Apart from a couple of holes in the ends of the boom and yard I installed two clamcleats for the outhauls on the boom.

Since the new sail is 18% bigger than the old Tirrik sail I replaced the fairlead in the masttop with a Harken Micro block (one of the smallest Harken ball-bearing blocks) to allow a quick hoist without friction.

I also replaced the 10mm double-braided main sheet with a new 8mm double-braided sheet from SailSupply.nl in order to quickly release the sheet. Last year we were caught out a couple of times when I could not release the sheet quickly enough. I did not expect the new bigger sail to be so forgiving. The new 8mm sheet and the Harken C40 blocks are a much better combination, but I will have to sail with gloves from now on.

On Easter Sunday I was finally ready to sail. There was a N2 which was just ideal to test the new bigger sail. When I was cruising up the Dokkumer Ee towards Burdaard I was hailed by friend and sailmaker Marten-Jan. We enjoyed sailing Hatseflats two-up and found that the new rig was quite responsive in light airs.