Clean Sails
When we brought Cinnamon up from the San Francisco Bay area last summer the sails were a little soiled. With everything else going on getting her ready to go back in the water we didn’t think about the sails until we were putting them back on. Overall the sails are in good condition, but they could have used being sent off to the be cleaned. As the weather started getting cold and rainy this fall some tiny mildew spots starting to form near the head of the mainsail. Since the forecast for late December was looking bleak for any sailing we pulled the mainsail off and sent it up to Clean Sails. Our timing was good and we got it back in time to catch a couple nice days of sailing in January.
I had used Clean Sails last year to clean the mainsail on our Catalina Capri 25 sailboat and was very happy with the results. The Capri had been setting at the marina for a few years and the sail cover had split. It had a nice, good quality North Sails main that was still very crisp, but it had gotten extremely soiled and was actually growing green algae and badly mildewed on the outside of a few of the flakes where dirt had gotten into the sail cover. North Sails website had some information on cleaning sails. We brought the sail home and washed it by hand, un-flaking it across the back deck and scrubbing it with Woolite mild laundry detergent and then rinsing. That took the green off pretty well and lightened the soiled and mildew spots enough that it wasn’t to bad and we used it for the summer. North Sails’ website also had a link to their recommended sail cleaner, Clean Sails, so in the fall when I took the sails off the boat I sent it up to them. They got 100% of the mildew stains out, most of the heavy soil stains, whitened it a lot and the sail was still nice and crispy. It was well worth the price when we went to sell the boat after we bought Cinnamon.
Clean Sails is located on Bainbridge Island, Washington. (website http://www.cleansails.com) They do a complete hand sail cleaning process and soak the sails in large vats with gentle hand agitation. The sails are inspected and gone over by hand. Next they go through a neutralizing rinse, and finally they are hung to air dry with just fans. The process totally kills and removes mildew stains and green algae. It also removes rust and dirt. They charged 80 cents per square foot. The 259 square foot mainsail, with UPS shipping to and from Portland ended up costing about $225.
When we were putting the sail back on two different people at the dock ask if we had gotten a new sail. When we told them we had just gotten the sail cleaned they wanted to know where. I was happy to recommend Clean Sails.
