If you can find a used sail that really fits your boat--it's a wonderful thing. It is difficult to do for non-production boats, though. Also, if the sail has been sitting a while, the vendor is likely to make a deal, for sure.
Your sail sounds to be about the same size as ours--the 10 oz Dacron one we have bent on right now weighs about 100 lbs. The new one is heavier. Our max sail size is a 54.3 ft luff, 57 ft leech, 23 ft foot. Our existing sail had 54.25/56.67/21.33 and the "new" used sail will be 52.25/54.8/22.67 (reducing the foot from 23.9 btw with the mod). As mentioned--looking at used sails, things like attachment systems, battens, offsets, and so forth make a real difference. The sail we found at Bacon wouldn't have required an modification BUT had 7/8" ss sail slides sewn on webbing and I'd have had to find about 20 of the hard-to-find-used-or-costly-new (try $2-$10 each used vs $40 each new!) bronze sail slides to use the sail and keep my old one ready to use. It turns out, the sail we bought for our main was actually a mizzen sail from a huge ketch. That ketch's main is almost 80 ft in luff length. Lucky us, else we wouldn't have likely found the low aspect sail at all.
While I like using good used sails when they can be found, the reality is that USUALLY a new sail is dollar-for-dollar a better deal. That's just because typically a sail has seen a lot of UV light and experienced serious degradation that we cannot see. If you ever read Emiliano Marino's
Sailmaker's Apprentice, he has a great section on sail survey and another on materials of construction.
Because of the vintage (1931) of our boat and our interest in continuing to use traditional methods (e.g. hand set/sewn bronze eyelets and cringles vs hydraulic pressed cringles or D-rings...sewn on external boltrope vs internal and so forth...) the cost of a new sail is going to be...more... we could have gotten into a new Rolly Tasker cruising main for as little as $3,300. But, not with the traditional construction methods we desire.
One of the BEST deals out there for someone in the USA who cannot find a good used sail and cannot afford a new sail is to use Sailrite and build a sail. The amazing thing about Sailrite is their expertise in custom sails. They can loft out, cut, and mark-up a sail for your sewing at a very reasonable price. You can do the sewing onboard your boat and not even have to have access to a lofting floor. For example, I looked into having them do a 12 oz Dacron sail. The ready-to-sew sail would have been $1700 delivered. Then, I would have had roughly 60 manhours of machine work and the handwork to do...Or, I could have had Sailrite do some of the sewing while I did the rest. They are very flexible. It also takes them far fewer hours to build a sail than it would have for me to do the same. Probably I will work with Sailrite to have them cut my "spare" foresail (it is a tall gaff sail) and I will sew it myself. Since very few lofts can do a good job with a gaffer, but Sailrite has a reputation of being able to do so, I'll be happy to work that out with them. In the meanwhile, though, I do keep an eye out for used gaff sails of the right size and in good condition, though they are quite rare!
I hope Tacoma comes back with info about their existing sails--curious minds want to know
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