Do it yourself mainsaildrop-stowaway

Recently I refitted our HT with a new mainsail stowaway. It took me less than a day to make it so here's how I did it.
1) measure the lenght of the grove in the boom where the mainsail slides in. In my case it's 270cm. That will be the lenght of the stowaway.
2) Buy a piece of (white)cloth or vinyl of 300×100 cm,300x40cm other clolor vynyl or cloth,300 a non partable zip of 300cm, 2 nonpartable zippers of aprox 100cm, 6 bronze or stainless do it yourself rings of 14mm and 4 of 11mm.300x10cm of sail-strip (thin sailcloth)
3) Cut two pieces of 270x25x75 of the (white)cloth. A bit of a triangular shape. If you use cloth a bit bigger because there are seems then.
4) Cut two strips of the other clolor of 17×250 and leave a strip of 5×300 (youl need it later.
5) Right in the middle of the lenght of your big triangulars there you make a 5cm wide tunnel to fit a piece of fiber or wood. to give the whole thing a bit of strenght. Now this strip is cut 17cm high and the tunnel is only five the other 12cm should me folded back so that it leaves a loose flap of minimal 5cm. this means that 2cm is sewn iside the earlier tunnel. So; 5cm tunnel,5cmflap (double=10cm,)2cm inside the tunnel. This flap has to be double because the rings that support will be pressed here.
6)Stitch the two smaller zippers at the bottom of your triangular cloths, at the small (25cm)end. Cut a strip away of around 90x2cm at about 2cm from the edge of the bottom and 5cm from the edge of the end. You stitch the zips in the opening. These two zips are neccessary in our case to let the reeflines through. If you don't have a reefsystem that needs lines to be attatched under th boom you can skip the two zips.
7)Stitch the long zip into place a the upper side and leave the rest of the zip hangning loose at the aft (25cm) part of the stowaway . The zip will hang vor aprox 25cm but if you have rollers at the end of the boom the reefinglines have to go inside the openend zip. Don't forget to secure the zip at the end by means of a small piece of material .Add the leftover other color stirp of 5×300 to cover the zip (UV rays and rain),attatch it on one side to flap over the zip
8)Now combine the two triangular parts by means of the sail-strip material. (Take care that the long closing-zip is not twisted!!!)at the bottom part.
9)Insert the 14 mm rings in the flap the first one is inserted around 40 cm from the edge of the wide side the second one 95cm from the first and the third 100cm from the second.
10)Insert the 4 11mm rings at the corners next to the sailstrip to secure the whole thing in place when installes on the boom.
11)The two plastic or wooden strips should be inserted into the tunnels. The aftside is closed. I made the frontside with a little pocket just like those woods in the mainsail.

Thats it. The whole thing is slided into the tunnel . The sailmaterial strip folds around the mainsail and slides in the boom together with the mainsail.
Dont forget to keep the reefinglines inside the main zip.
The stowaway is kept up by means of three lines tha are are a bit weblike (look at other boats I dont know here to explain it) and rollers at the side of the mast around 4 meters up.
I'll (arrrrgh) try to upload some pictures of the stowaway and lines.
Have fun!!
mail :juupdales(#$%^&)chello.nl