We are building a Joel White 7′ 7″ Nutshell Pram and will rig it with a 37-sq-ft lug main. We ordered the Nutshell lugsail kit from Sailrite, pressed Skipper’s sewing skills into service for the construction, and are very pleased with the result.The kit comes with nine pages of instructions, five precut sail panels and six sets of corner and reef reinforcements pre-cut from 4-oz Dacron. Also included in the kit are telltales, a Sailrite logo sticker, spur grommets, a roll of 1/4″ Seamstick double-sided adhesive basting tape, V-69 UV-resistant polyester thread, and 3″ non-adhesive Dacron tape. All the materials were well packaged, and shipping was prompt. When we had questions along the way, Sailrite’s crew and sailmaker were very responsive to our phone calls and emails.The sail panels are computer plotted with seam lines, hem lines, and reefpoint placement. The sides of each panel are curved to different degrees, so when they are sewn to the 1/2″ marked on the cloth, this broadseaming, as it’s called, helps give the sail its “belly,” and together with the curves in the sail’s perimeter of the sail, create a wonderful three-dimensional aerodynamic shape for driving power.
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We recently put together a Sailrite kit for our boat. My spouse is an experienced tailor and she found the instructions easy to follow. We made mistakes, but everything came out fine in the end. Our only issue was with knowing how a sail is assembled. We erred in what happens when. Make sure you understand the terminology and do not take the steps out of order from the instructions. And yes, the sail works great!
We know it is easy to miss a step and not read that very last sentence in a long paragraph 🙂 A “read twice cut once” approach is good for the few parts that need to be cut. And even the best tailors have seam rippers.
Sailrite has excellent customer service to help with each step, or to let us know if our mistake was a big one or one that wouldn’t be noticed by someone galloping by on their horse.
Have fun with your sail!
Cheers
Skipper and Kent
Interesting article, well explained, maybe it will encourage others to have a go themselves.
Do you have instructions or details of how you handled the boom-to-mast connection for the standing lug? I am building a 9’6” nutshell and am about to hit that point and haven’t puzzled it out. I have built a Caledonia Yawl but that is a balanced lug.
Hi Joshua,
There is a beehole at the forward end of the boom for the tack of the sail, I tied a bronze snap shackle (from our Sunfish parts bin) to the boom through the same beehole with a piece of 1/8″ diameter New England Rope Dacron cord. Pick the marlinespike artwork that works for you. On the mast we screwed on a bronze eyestrap (more Sunfish bits) with piloted Frearson-head silicon-bronze wood screws. The snap shackle connects and disconnects easily to the eyestrap.
We guessed at where to place the eyestrap on the mast based on where the yard crossed the top of the mast, a little bit down from the mast top beehole, then I noticed a few days later on the spar plan page that the location of the boom attachment point is marked on the plans, 17 1/2 inches up from the base of the mast. Our spot was within 1/2 inch 🙂
You might check out our Pram build on our blog.
Cheers,
Skipper and Clark