In my opinion the best sails ever made available for the Cape Cutter 19 were the original suit of “North Sails” produced in South Africa. These were never made available by North Sails Europe, for a reason I am not sure of.

They are of excellent quality, cut and build.

I have a full set:

Genoa (with roller reefing)
Yankee (with roller reefing)
Staysail (with roller reefing)
Staysail (hanked)
Mainsail

I have always looked after my suit of sails and are kept in tip top condition with any modifications, cleaning etc carried out at the end of the season.

The main is kept packed on the boat.

Over the years some of the smaller eyelets on the main have started to corrode. These appear to be nickel brass and have detoriorated due to exposure to sea water.

This year I decided to replace all the smaller eyes with stainless steel eyelets. I bought these from Germany (£6.50 for 50), and a machine with tooling to install them for £25.00. Both items were from Ebay.

The press tool is pretty substantial (I do not know how this can be made for £25.00!) but had a handle for operation. This was no good for operation with stainless eyelets so I took it apart to use a hammer to shock the tooling together. This worked very well and proved a total success.

Of course this work could have been done by a sail maker but I worked out that after postage, the work itself and postage back it was cheaper to do the job myself.

Click on the for a simple narrative for each photo.