Sail Repair?

[KirkH]

As I look through the rules I see repairs for masts, rudders, leaks and normal damage but nothing for sails. Is this the way everyone normally plays or do folks use some sort of house rule to allow the repair of sails? I'm OK either way but I was just wondering. As I get familiar with this wonderful game I wonder if veteran players pretty much stick to the rule book as written or if there are commonly used house rules I'm not familiar with. Thanks again for all your responses. Right now I have the San Agustin battling the HMS Vanguard and the Spanish are desperate to find out if they can repair their sails.

[Dobbs]

I have heavily modified the rules for our games. As I recall in the standard rules, a sail hit has no immediate effect, but every 2 sail hits reduces a ship's top speed by 1. 6 sail hits is the equivalent of being dismasted and that's that. There is a strange note that after the 6th hit a player should use a broken mast counter, and the rules say you can fix a broken mast once...

[KirkH]

Yeah the rules are a tad confusing because they seem to say for every two hits you lose a level of sail. So if you take two hits you can't use full sails, but can still use battle sails with no penalties - or at least that's the way I interpret it. So there's no significant damage other than the ability to use full sails until you take your fourth sail hit and lose the ability to use battle sails. I'd think it would say for every two sail hits you lose a level of sail effectiveness, so if you're at battle sails your ship responds as if it's at backing sails and you'd need to raise your sails to full for them to effectively be battle sails.

[Dobbs]

I like your reasoning, Kirk. That does seem like a better way to present it.

[JackAubrey1805]

Officially, damaged sails may not be repaired.
Everything else is house rules.
I am currently in the process of writing or summarizing a few house rules for a slightly different handling of claims.