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There are many different sails on a yacht, and they have to be made in particular shapes. They are not just straight pieces of fabric. They have to be incredibly strong, or the wind tears them to bits. Many years ago, sails used to be made of canvas, and they were incredibly heavy. These days all sorts of special sailcloth is used, and big racing yachts can have sails that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. Sails are made by professional sailmakers, who work in a sail loft. It has to have a lot of room, so that these huge sails can be spread out on a surface. |
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Both men and women work as sailmakers, and it is a very technical job. A good sail can make all the difference to how fast a boat goes when it is racing. And no-one wants a sail that falls to bits in too much wind. |
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The floor of the loft has too be big enough to spread the sail out, to see how all the different parts join up together. |
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At the end of the process, these sailors are walking the finished sail out to the boat, so it can be tried out on the water. Most small sail boats have only one sail because the square footage of sail area is big enough to collect enough wind to push a light boat. As the size of the boat gets larger and heavier, you need to have more sail surface for the wind to interact with - the sail has to be larger. At some point, the sail gets just too large to handle. The solution is to add more sails that are smaller and easier to handle but collectively make up a large sail area. |
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