Good one. It sure is nice being in the shade of those sails on a hot day.

I too had heard that tanbark lasts longer. In the case of my sails, they are something like 5 or 6 oz and are like raising a sheet of steel to the wind. The nice thing is they don't tend to collapse in low wind conditions and the shape seems to work well for ghosting along. I have not had the boat out in anything over about 16 kts, so I don't know how well she would do with reefed sails, or how good the sail shape would be in those kinds of winds.

I have no idea how old the sails are, but the cloth feels strong, but their are thread failures in some areas.

As far as looks in general, I really like the tanbark with the sheer of my boat and the pseudo lapstrake look (fake molded in boards). A number of times I have heard "look at that old wooden boat" while out sailing... of course it is really a "young" FRP boat. I think the lines, the sails and the cutter rig come together quite nicely... but then I'm a bit biased.

Last year we were out and about off of Mission Bay and we saw another small cutter rigged boat. My wife commented on how "cute" it was (gotta keep the admiral happy). So we sailed on over only to discover it was an Orion just like ours, but with white sails. Of course we had to "race." GRIN. He had just a bit less sail area due to self tending stays'l. We did well.