Sportsboatworld was informed by the sailmakers Hyde’s some months ago that the raw manufacturer supplier for our sails ( C242) used for Jibs and Mainsails has gone bankrupt due to covid business downturn. ( TC: Gennaker cloth not affected)

Following that SBW and Hyde’s spend a fair amount of time discussing and trying to find any amount of C242 material worldwide, but could not find any, as well as researching what else was readily available…

During this investigation Hyde’s been found a material called PXB15 that is remarkably similar.  In Hyde’s opinion the weight of the sails will be virtually the same and shape remains same. See samples of both materials being weighted.  They are similar but not identical in construction and also visibly almost same, the new one being slightly darker.

The properties of each material are shown in the graph attached.

Richard Lovering of Hyde Sail’s explains as follows:

TC: Richard tells us how to interpret the graphs and data about the different sail cloth’s.

So… to understand these graph the Warp is along the cloth and Fill is across the cloth.  So the Warp is the length of the panels and Fill is across the panel.  The 45 deg is the diagonal across the cloth.

On the 10, 20, 50, and 100Ibf you are looking for the lowest number on the chart, so the cloth is not moving much for the best result.  On the Load at 1% Ibf.  You are looking for the highest numbers for the best result.  So how much load it takes to stretch the cloth 1%.

You can see that the C242 and PXB15 are very close on the 10ibf. In this specific condition one could argue that the C242 is a better cloth on the Fill and 45.

The C242 is made with a 2mm finished film and the PXB has a finished film of 1.5mm.  I would say that the yarns are not doing much at this point and the Film is doing all the work.  Therefore one could argue the C242 looks better here. But 10lbf is a small load (TC: therefore both will be satisfactory in light winds)