Jay we have a twenty five year old Salrite Sailmaker which was one of the first machines they offered. It's actually a modified small commercial Brother and can really sew. We sewed through ten layers of 8 oz. cloth which is 1'2" thick. The big drawback is that it's a 90 lbs. cast iron machine so we don't take it with us. It's been a work horse and never had a problem.
I agree with you Lee about getting a machine especially if your a serious long distance cruiser. Some friends of ours tore their new main in the SP and had a hard time getting it fixed. It turned out to be expensive and a lousy repair. We use our machine a lot. This summer we made cushion slip covers, a padded cover for the V berth and a Bimini.
The only thing I'd add is that although sails are cut using a computer CAD program, primarily the one designed in New Zealand, It's still up to the sail maker to design the sail with the proper cord and draft placement. This one place that Kern has nailed down for the Westsail. The sails Sailrite offers are almost all from the original plans. The super yankee they offer is an exception and has an asterisk that states measurements are estimates. A BIG area of difference is in the main. Kern's full batten main is a vast improvement over the original hollow leach main they offer. The big advantage to CAD designed sails is not having to broad seam and they can see 3D renderings of the sail shape.
We rented a truck and took a ton of stuff off the boat from Southern Calif. including the sewing machine before we got to Mexico. That worked out as we never needed it and even if we did there are plenty of cruising sail makers and canvas people in Baja and a sail loft if La Paz. Even at that I agree with you and wish we had a machine for all the neat projects that we thought up and would have been fun to make. If we went any further we would get a lighter machine like the LSZ-1 by Sailrite.
The fact that you make all your sails says it all.
Jim
