> And also, your mentioning that you wet the pants again to
> prevent air from flowing through reminds me of the Jack
> Aubrey series in which I remember a mention of wetting the
> sails in a heated chase, so that the ship could go a bit
> faster, either to get away or catch up : ) . You have a
> boat, right? Have you ever wet the sails to go faster? Or
> is the sail cloth different now. Or did you not have the
> inclination.

Well, I've had the sails wet. . . but only as a result of the infamous Chesapeake Bay Chop. . . or a very poor spinnaker douse (-: Sails nowadays are of dacron, nylon, mylar, kevlar, liquid crystal, and a host of other strange substances, but rarely of cotton; cotton is heavy, stretches too much, & is subject to rot. It is also relatively porous, which is generally a Bad Thing if you are trying to make speed. Hence the wetting of cotton sails in the old days, but usually only when the wind is light & you need to wring every ounce of efficiency out of it you can. You'd never wet the sails in a 15 knot breeze, for example; you are more likely to be wondering if you have too much canvas set.

It's a desperate measure in another respect: it adds weight aloft when you need to be as light as possible & the weight in the boat as low as possible. I wonder if it actually ever improved anyone's speed who ever tried it, although if you're at your wits' end to get more speed & you haven't caught up/gotten away, you might as well give it a try.

Modern sails are all coated with various resins, or sandwiched with continuous films, so the porousity is already filled. Splashing water on the sails would add weight to them for no purpose, although it also wouldn't adhere to them very long, so I guess it wouldn't do a lot of harm.

YHOS, Snarkhunter