It is true that the website says 1.9 to 2.3 kg for an A-cat sail including battens, but I'm still very sceptical. I want to hold such a sail and see it handle 15 knots of wind before I'm convinced.

On the same webpage, this sailmaker quotes 3.4 kg (ex battens) for a pentex mainsail comparable to one used on the F18's (Mattia Esse). This is still lighter than any A-cat sail that Bill Vinnig ever measured. His heavy duty dacron-pentex combination mainsail is only 5.5 kg. This all sounds extremely light with what I and other know/have measured.

Personally, I have serious doubts about these sails or these weights. Like I said my spinnaker alone, perfectly dry, is already 1.23 kg, I really don't see any mainsail, capable of handling 15 knots, weight less than two spinnaker sails.

But I'm open to be convinced otherwise, so when I see an oxo-sail I will certainly pick it up.

Personally, I'm not a fan of extremely lightweight sails, They bloody things just stretch very quickly and where I sail you better have a sail that can handle 25 knots with the occasional cannon ball gust. I'm very thankful that my mainsail has survived my crew falling into to it twice this season. (I have to teach her not to do that)

Lets keep this discussion open till I've picked up such an 2 kg OXO sail.

Just quickly meaured my sail package :

I weight 10 kg for

-1- one mainsail pentex
-2- 7 glass battens which I know to be heavier than the fibre foam ones.
-3- one jib sail pentex
-4- an extra set of 3 glass battens as spares and to flatten out the top in heavy winds.
-5- The bag in which the jib is stored
-6- The bag in which the mainsail is stored
-7- a 50 mm by 1.6 by 2.4 mtr alumumiun boom.
-8- a 2.1 mtr glass tiller bar that is used to connect the tillers on the ruddersticks.

All the battens together will be about 1 kg
The boom will be about 1.5 kg
The Tiller will be about 0.75 kg
The jib is 1.2 kg if I remember correctly
The bag together will not be heavier than 1 kg.

Therefor subtract 1 + 1.5 + 0.75 + 1.2 + 1 = 5.45 kg.

This roughly puts my mainsail at about 4.5 kg ex battens or about 5.0 - 5.5 kg with battens depending on what kind one is using. But to be safe we'll just add 0.5 kg as uncertainty margin => 6 kg for my, ready to use, mainsail with heavier glass battens

So the 8 kg figure I gave earlier was indeed for the two sails (main + jib) + battens + sailbags and not for the mainsail alone.

I didn't have time to take out all the stuff from the sailbag and remove the battens to measure the mainsail properly. I might try again this weekend.


Wouter