A truck pulled up to the loft late last week with a 700 pound delivery of sailcloth! The order consisted of 1300 yards of Oceanus cloth in both #10 and #13 weight. This is a cloth that has the hand and look of a natural fiber cloth but is built of polyester (Dacron) so that it has great durability and of course won't rot. The smaller sails will be built of the lighter stuff and the main topsail as well as the two courses and bonnets will be built of the heavy. So the cloth is all here and we are now in the process of selecting the rope for the edges. It is not such an easy thing as the stretch characteristics of the rope must work with the cloth, and the rope must be able to take a dye to give it a tarred look. We will use a polyester three strand type rope but there are many from which to choose. Our first pick is not available in the 1" diameter required for the heavier sails. Hopefully this will be resolved shortly and we'll be making sails in the next week or two. In the mean time we have several modern sails to build so the loft will stay plenty busy.
