Aluula composite sails go around the world in The Ocean Race

Victoria, British Columbia-based Aluula Composites Inc. has partnered with French sail maker Incidence Sails to introduce Durlyte, a light, strong and recyclable composite fabric to reinforce parts of sails that face high levels of abrasion.

Incidence Sails supplied skipper Paul Meilhat's IMOCA racing sailboat, Biotherm, with sails made partially with Durlyte for The Ocean Race, a round-the-world race.

Aluula and Incidence Sails spent about two years testing the material on and off the water, Dave Westwood, director of partner innovation and design at Aluula Composites, told Plastics News in an interview.

Incidence makes sails for offshore, ocean-racing sailboats that require sails with high durability and low weight.

Incidence Sails used the material as a sail reinforcement in parts of the sail. Like batten pockets and high-wear areas including the foot, where it might rub against the deck and where the sail might rub against a stanchion or spreader.

"[Incidence is] very technical," Westwood said, "and an excellent partner for us to develop the application … in these abrasion patches."

The Durlyte material features an "ultra-high molecular weight woven core with ultra-high molecular weight domes fused to the outside," Westwood said. "What you're left with is a composite fabric that's incredibly strong but more importantly for this application is incredibly durable [and] … has a very low surface energy."

Aluula is also testing the material, which "absorbs next to no water," in sail bags that protect the sail before it is set and are "easy to drag around the deck," he said, adding that "the decks of these boats are like sandpaper" to give crew traction when the deck gets wet.

"The initial thought… was to make an entire sail with Aluula materials," Westwood said. So far, the company has used Durlyte in relatively small amounts in current applications.

Coming from the wind sports market, he said, "our materials are a little more structural … the materials we're using in kite boarding and windsurfing are the inflatable structure. Those are very stiff, very good at strength and abrasion."

"Sailing is a natural next step," for the company, Westwood said in a news release. "The combination of Durlyte's extreme abrasion, tear and UV resistance coupled with zero water absorption make it an attractive choice for a technical sail brand [like] Incidence Sails [to reduce] the weight of their sails while greatly improving durability."

"There are current materials that are doing a pretty good job, especially when it comes to composite sails," Westwood said, like layered carbon tapes for upwind sails that "need to be very stiff and flat."

Ultra-high molecular weight materials are very strong, but not as stiff as carbon, which stretches about 2 percent before breaking he said. The ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene can stretch up to six percent before it breaks.

Downwind sails, like spinnakers "can stretch a little more," Westwood said.

That's why Aluula is focusing on using the material as sewn-in patches for upwind sails where abrasion is a problem. Durlyte can also be heat welded, which Aluula is exploring in inflatable structures like rafts and in backpacks.

The material is also bacterial-growth resistant and can be seam taped and can be thermoformed.

Although Durlyte is the company's first step into the sailboat sail market, it plans to move into other applications, including creating a "complete" Aluula sails that will be 100 percent recyclable.

Aluula's entire portfolio "is based around the ability to fuse technical films to ultra-high molecular weight cores and we do that without the use of glues," Westwood said. "We use all polyethylene-based films which means that the materials are recyclable at the end of their useful life … any of the off cuts during manufacturing can be collected and recycled as well."

Usually, materials in sailboat sails and wind sport sails end up in "the garbage when you're done with them," he added.

Aluula is in the beginning stages of creating a recycling system for the products their materials end up in.

The company is partnering with the University of British Columbia to create compression plates for the technical recycling system.

"People can bring back their kites and bags and sails and it can be made into something else in the future," Westwood said. "We're a composite materials manufacturer but we really see circularity as being key to our brand."