October 14, 2018-Bright Bags

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Bag Art

I call it "Bag Art". Oh, it's not all that much art, just something which I think is kind'a fun; making an attractive and colorful sail bag. You see, I got a couple of spinnaker bags from China, one more than I needed. (I guess ordering in Cantonese is not my strong point). Both were black. Boring. What is worse is that I knew it would cause my forw'd hands some confusion: "Go get the A3". If there are five to choose from, maybe you get the right one, maybe not. But if I gave the bags some distinctive colors and distinctive markings, well then it would be easier: "Get the A3, (black bag)" or "Get the black and yellow bag with the A2 in it".

So I bought some yellow sunbrella scraps from Mike and my white insignia cloth and we got out the sewing machine, and off we went, making new bags.

On top of that, we took some time to re-measure the spinnakers, just in case we needed to prove that they were legal size, and we put the sails into the bags with a nice fold, to make them pack smaller.

All in all it was a nice project for a couple of days.

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Mexico

October 22, 2017-Bagaman

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
2D Bag

Being an old fashioned sailboat we have our sails in bags. We have bags of sails. Many bags of sails. Between racing sails and cruising sails, we have 15 sails, all in sail bags. Most of the sails are in pretty good shape but over the years, as we reused bags when we replaced sails, the bags have gotten scruffy.

Some were torn, most were getting dirty and faded, and some were turning into rags.

So as nice as the sails themselves were, the unsightly sailbags gave a bad impression.

I like our boat to look good, as much as that is possible for an old war horse, so this summer I got into my “Bagaman” mode and began sewing new sailbags as well as rejuvenating some of the old ones.

Besides looks, there is a practical side to this project: when it comes time to grab a sail from down below and get it on deck we often don’t have a lot of time to search through the pile looking for the right sail, especially in a race situation when the afterguard is hollering something like, “get the J-3 on deck, right away.” So putting the sails in brightly colored bags, with large code numbers on the bag, helps speed along that process. It is a lot easier when the sewer-man (the crew member who goes below to fetch the sail) can be sent with the following instruction, “Get the J3 up here, that’s blue and yellow bag with the J3 on it, pronto, if you will”.

Another change to the sailbags which I knew would be helpful to the crew was the addition of good grab handles and handy, big, zipper enclosures.

With those criterion in mind I ordered a variety of bolts of bag cloth, in the colors I wanted, and plenty of webbing and zipper stock, did some designs, and set about building a bunch of bags in cool colors and with great handles and zippers. I also designed strong reinforcing panels to help prevent ripping out bags when some strong forward hand roughly throws a bag from one side of the boat to another.

Actually this was a fun project for me; it’s kind of an art project, if you can stretch the concept of art to include a sailbag. Anyhow, I love this kind of sewing and I knew I’d love the finished products.

It took me a couple of weeks, (and some time for the bags I finished previously when the first material arrived). Judy was gone through most of this and the boat was a mess but now it’s finished and we have all these nice bags.

One thing I learned though: There is a good reason why the sail lofts charge $300 or more for a sail bag; they are a lot of work.

Check out the photos of some of the bags. Never mind what might be inside of them, don’t the bags look really nice?

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, La Cruz Huanacaxtle