The re sewn mainsail cover,it will last a few more seasons now,the spray dodger has also seen similar repairs,saving us at least the cost of the machine I would think?
Here I am re sewing the mainsail cover,note the custom bobbin holder,a tube socket is in the Lewmar winch handle hole,works a treat,time for me to take out a patent?
My dad taught me to use a sewing machine,he in turn was taught in a german prison of war camp by a cobbler called Paddy,my dad became the camps tailor,he conned his way into this job to keep him out of the hard labour stone quarries.Type in to Google 'Gunner Robert McBride',you should find his true story of life in the camp.
www.pegasusarchive.org/pow/rob_mcbride.htm copy and paste this address into Google.
One of the best bit of kit we ever bought was an electric sewing machine,that was a step up from our hand driven Singer Sewing Machine,which even with its single straight stitch,the Singer works just fine but one hand has always to be winding the handle,so the feed in one handed,which is not so good on some jobs.We looked around at one of the local hyper stores for a small electric machine,found two models by Janome and chose the less expensive one,it was in our trolly when a lady supervisor asked why we took that one? Price was not really the issue,so explaining the Singer and what we hoped to sew with the new machine,she advised the Janome Finesse JFS1823,I asked her why,she said its simply a better machine with many more features,such as the Zig Zag stitch,which in our case would be needed for any spinnaker repair.
So here we are a decade later,the machine we purchased has been used for just about everything on our boat that needed repair,some easy things like a cockpit awning we even made ourselves,to date we have re sewn the spray dodger and over this holiday, I completly re did all the stitches on our main sail cover,the zip was ripping off,the thread that had been used seems to have been affected by the UV sunlight.Excepting the really thick parts where many layers of cloth have been placed to act as reinforcing,our Janome sews right through double and even tripple layers of the acrylic canvas,zippers too.
Tips:
Use a Janome Denim 16 or Klasse Jeans 90/100 needle (a Janome number 11 needle will be far too small)they are very much stronger and the eye hole is large enough to take the spinnaker thread we like to use,its very strong and should resist the sunlight beter.
Service your machine at least once a year,use light oil as per the users manual and check the drive belt for correct tension.
Make sure any machine you buy has a reverse function,its a really usefull addition when you need to finish off.
When preparing to do a large job,prepare a number of the smaller lower thread bobins,this will save you time later.
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