Time had come to replace our good old North Sails main sail (in place since 2008). After discussion and following the advise from our sailmaker, we decided to go for a new sailcloth: Vectron from DIMENSION-POLYANT. This is a new line of woven sailcloth in DP’s catalog for 2017. I will add a link to DP’s Vectron page when it exists 🙂

Meet Vectron

From DIMENSION-POLYANT:

Special in-house production methods are used to combine low stretch, high strength Vectran® with best quality high tenacity Polyester to produce a tightly woven fabric that is strong and is easy to handle with exceptionally durability.

As a result, Vectron sailcloth is about the same grammage (basis weight) than a good Dacron sail. In our case VEC100 (~ 440 g/m²) will be used for our 63 m² main sail. Compared to pure Dacron, Vectron is slightly more stable, much more resistant and less prone to deformation. It is a woven cloth, so no de-lamination to expect. DIMENSION-POLYANT adds a UV protection coat to protect the Vectran® fibers because of their low resistance to UV light.

While Vectron is new to some markets (Europe, except UK), it’s been well tested (for almost 2 decades) on some other markets and even in some offshore competitions. After extended periods at sea, no significant changes in shape were detected in Vectron sails.

Partnership with Vectron

To help DIMENSION-POLYANT spread the word on this Vectron line that is new to the European market, we will be publishing testimonials in the coming months about it, based on our real-life experience with this new sail/sailcloth. In exchange of this service, DIMENSION-POLYANT offered us a financial advantage. Also, we will be providing them with some photos of this new sail with their logo on it. Expect to see us on their Facebook page one of these days.

Our sailmaker

For this new sail, we have been working with our usual sailmaker (Russo Yachting) that made our Code Zero 2 years ago and that has been taking great care of Soledad’s rig and sails for the last 4 years.

More on the new main sail in another post !