If you sail in an area with alot of green stuff in the water, and your sails and lines get dingy looking at the end of the year, consider this.

When you, or your mother-in-lay (HaHa) is closing her pool, and the pool has been shocked with a good amount of chlorine, throw all of your ropes and sails, and the tramp, in the water for a couple of hours. The stuff comes out looking like new. I did a bit of research, and most of it says that chlorine has no effect on dacron. Many sites suggest cleaning dingy sails with bleech.

I've done this for a number of years, and never seen any damage I could attribute to chlorine. The logos on the sails might fade slightly, but the sun does far more fading.

Even better, throw all of the loose hardware in the pool to wash out as much salt as possible. Things like furler drums often get put away with salty lines on them for the whole winter.

I've also heard that you can put all running rigging in the washing machine. Just remove the agitator (the vertical corkscrew thingy first) And add some soap to take out all the salt and grit.

Robert

A bucket and a scoop of oxy-clean is much easier to come by

Chlorine is not very friendly to 304 and 303 Stainless Steel (some of your rigging parts are probably of this material)...however, the dilution rate even in a 'shocked' pool is probably not enough to cause a problem. We build machinery for most major retail chlorine manufacturers and occasionally get some stainless mixed up (there is a higher grade of stainless that resists chlorine). The result is that the inferior stainless part quickly rusts.

Altermatively put your sheets into a pillowcase and then throw into the washing machine.