Sharkskin isn't made anymore, because the manufacturers had massive production issues with it. Sharkskin was basically normal dacron made with a different binder/sizing material (which gave it the grey color) What I heard from North was that the manufacturer was swapping from making normal dacron to Sharkskin and back, and they never found a good way to clean the full set of equipment between runs, so that they ended up with large rolls of material which was 90% white dacron with bits of Sharkskin binder mixed in, an vice/versa. If you got your sail built from a roll of well behaved Sharkskin, you were a happy camper. (We still have use our '02 Sharkskin main for low end stuff, and it's shape has held up quite well) But... If you got a bad batch, the stuff distorted and stretched, and did so unevenly, making for really, really ugly sails in a hurry.

- David