Day 4

This morning I finished working on the sail that I started yesterday. Yesterday I taped the bottom part of the sail on the older piece. Today I sewed the seams up. It was hard sewing at first because it was still pretty early in the morning and I had to get back into the rhythm of it. So I kind of messed up the first stitch especially since it was on a curve, which made it even harder, but finally I redid that spot and it turned out really well. Once the new part was completely sewed on I then cut off the old piece. Now the sail looks as good as new. I also put tell tails on the sail because they were missing. The tell tails are the small pieces of yarn that hang off the jib to let you know where the wind is coming from and whether you need to pull in your sail or not. After I was done with the sail that I fixed I helped one of the other workers, named Rich, make a sail. He had started making it yesterday by cutting the sail out of an old sail. The sail material was still in good enough shape that he was able to use some of it for a new sail. The sail was all cut out today, and when I joined him in making it he was working on putting the patches and edges on. Rich showed me that at the head of the sail (the top) a few patches get put on it. They get layered on top of each other. We had to put the patches on the head of the sail because that is where a ring gets put in so that the halyard can be put through it. The halyard is the line that raises the sail up the mast. So there is going to be a lot of tension on the head of the sail since the ring is a heavy piece of metal and the halyard lifts lots of weight. If the patches weren’t there then the sail would rip from all of the weight. The patches help even it out. The patches that are on top of each other are stacked from smallest to largest making the most amount of material at the very top and that helps spread weight evenly. It was interesting to learn about that because I had never even thought about that factor. After the sides were all taped down, we then sewed the seams. Rich had me sew the seams, which I was very worried about because if I messed up then it would really matter because it was someone’s sail that was being made. Rich set me up on the sewing machine and I started sewing. The sewing machine that I used was a lot different then the others. I guess it is one the nicest ones because it sews through heavy material, so that made me even more nervous about breaking it. Well, the sewing went pretty well. The part that I hate the most about sewing machines is the bobbin. The bobbin is the part that spools the bottom thread under the sewing machine. I was always running out of bobbin and that was so annoying because it always had to be replaced, and it would mess up the stitch. Also the process of replacing the bobbin was really confusing. If it wasn’t done correctly then it would mess up the stitch because it wouldn’t look right. When I was stitching I would always hope that the bobbin would not run out. It took me a while to stitch because it was such a large sail and I had to take my time doing it so it would look nice. I ended up finishing the first stitch which looks really good. I felt really accomplished when I finished. I am still not done though because two more rows of stitches need to be done around the edge to make it super secure. By the end of the day it looked a lot like a normal sail so it was really cool to see that I helped build it. I really did not think that I would be building a sail this soon. I have learned a lot about sewing especially since I hadn’t ever used a sewing machine before this. Hopefully tomorrow I will get to finish making my first sail!