Tides Marine track with generic nylon slides

[peaman]

Last year I had a new Tides Marine track installed, with their stainless steel slides on my newest main sail which has only a single reef. I have an older but good main which has two reefs. Before ordering another set of steel slides, I realized that the nylon slides on that sail are almost exactly the same dimensions as the "regular" Tides slide. I wonder if anyone can comment on what might be expected if I were to hoist the sail on the Tides track without replacing the existing nylon slides?

 

[Christian Williams]

Tides uses a variety of slides, headboard, pressure batten and so on. Mine are much larger than typical slides, indicated by fact that they make a much higher stack (often requiring new sail cover).

No harm in trying out the sail, but naturally make sure it will come down before it goes all the way up. What would happen in heavy air I don't know and would like not to find out.

Two mainsails? How often will you decide to put the old one back on? That's probably the operative question, esp. since our boats sail so well under jib alone that we can do very well with a single reef, and when less mainsail needed, just furl it.

 

[JSM]

Probably the most efficent and cost effective thing to do would be to have a sailmaker put a second reef into the newer sail that allready has the tides SS slides and keep the older main as a spare.