How durable is printing on a sail?

What actually wears sail graphics

Not sailing. Handling. Flogging, hard packing, being dragged over a foredeck, UV, salt, and — on an asymmetric — repeated trips through a chute. A graphic that survives a season of racing has survived several hundred pack cycles, not several hundred hours of wind.

This is why the same artwork can be a five-year decision on a Dacron mainsail and a one-season decision on a light racing kite.

Matching durability to the campaign

A sponsor that changes every year is better served by SAIL-STICKER, where the graphic is designed to be replaced. A team identity that will stay with the boat is better served by a printed process.

Choosing removable where permanent was needed costs money later. Choosing permanent where the sponsor changes costs a sail.

The trade nobody can escape

We work primarily for the competitive market, and that market has already made its choice: weight matters more than longevity. You cannot have both unlimited lifetime and ultra-light weight. Anyone claiming otherwise is either adding weight they are not telling you about, or quoting a lifetime they have not tested.

So we do not sell one answer. We ask what the sail is for, and pick the process that puts the compromise where you want it.

How we know

Contender and Dimension-Polyant ran their own tests on our printing in the early days. Useful at the time — but since then we have put more weight on a better test: use. Fifteen years and more of sails built, sailed and packed tells you things a laboratory cannot.

It is also why we are careful with numbers we cannot stand behind. A figure from a test rig is easy to publish. A figure from a decade of sails coming back through lofts is worth more.