Full batten mainsail or not?

[jos]

I have a 2000 36.6 Sun Odyssey and am getting ready to replace the mainsail. It presently
does not have full battens. To me the sail does not look particularly well shaped with the
half battens.

My last boat (a 33 Hunter) had full battens and  was loose footed. I thought it a big improvement
over its previous half battened sail.

We do mostly short cruising on the  West coast of Florida, and no racing. The boat is equiped with
Lazy Jacks.

I am leaning toward a full batten and loose footed. Am I out of to lunch here?

JOS

[vasko]

Full battens made a significant difference for me - especially in light winds.. 

[sitara]

Full battens will make the sail harder to raise and lower and then lead to extra expense of cars etc. to make the sail easier to haul up . My boat has the standard Jeanneau battens and slugs in the groove and I can easily pull the main to within a metre of the top from the cockpit. The slugs on my sail have a small radius in them so that they do not jam in the slot.

I am happy with the sail shape but then I am a cruiser not a serious racer. It does have a loose foot which works very well especially when adding extra draft in light off-wind sailing. Now if I was a serious racer ...

[sleighride]

I had a J-40 with full battens and a Harken Bat car system before I purchased my DS43 which now has vertical battens and is loose footed with in mast furling. The one thing I miss the most from my old boat is the full batten main and the extra power and speed with the larger main, especially on a dead downwind run. However, I do sail more with the smaller main on the DS43, since with the bat car system on the J-40, the sail was sometimes difficult to get down when the wind was blowing over thirty knots as the sail would tend to blow back up the mast. 

[hoppy]

I have a full baton main with Rutgerson batcars using the standard mast groove. Whilst they are not as good as a full on batcar system, they are substantially cheaper.

I found in google I posted about getting them on my "new main" and that if I did not like them, I can always upgrade to the Harken battcar system. I have never once regretted not getting the harken.

[rene460]

Hi jos,

I do do not think that you are out to lunch, two different sailmakers, years and miles apart have advised me that full battens give a better sail shape and are the best choice unless class rules or similar racing or measurement rules prohibits it.

 I have full length battens on my SO30i with the Selden bat cars, and am very happy with the arrangement.  Original sails were normal leech battens.  Of course they are not a big deal on a 30.  They are a bit heavier to haul up, I leave the clutch lever in the pre-stress position (handle vertical, cam down on the rope), to reduce friction while hauling it up but prevent it from falling back between pulls.  I haul it up by hand to about the first feed height them winch the last bit.

 Lowering is no problem as they fall down very easily.  Sometimes we control the decent with a turn of the halliard around the winch, otherwise let it fall, the full length battens keep it within the lazy jacks.  I go up and tidy it up from the mast end and work aft to tidy up the folds and straighten the cloth, and  when reasonably tucked into the bag, fiddle with the zip to get it started at the boom end, the loose tail end means it has to be held taught while the slider is pulled along until it has zipped up about half a meter.  I pull the boom out to the side to work around the dodger which I never fold down. 

I hope hope this is a help with your decision making.

rene460

[MartyB]

I'll go for the middle! 2 full top, and 2 partial bottom. Along with the lose foot! I personally feel you get a bit more sail shaping with the 2/2 arrangement vs all or nothing to a degree. The full top battens allows a bit more roach up high, so more power, maybe not as much as a full setup...... But it is better when one wants to loosen the foot in downwind or light wind conditions to get a better overall sail shape. I even remove the top batten when I know the day/race will be light the whole time.

Not sure there is a true right or wrong. I still would not go for all full, more than likely a 2 top or 2 or 3 partial bottom ones for how I sail any how.

marty

[so36idavid]

Apr 13, 2015 23:03:06 GMT sitara said:

I am happy with the sail shape but then I am a cruiser not a serious racer. It does have a loose foot which works very well especially when adding extra draft in light off-wind sailing. Now if I was a serious racer ...

Sitara,

I too have a 36i. I don't race my boat but I've done a lot of racing and it bothers me that I have neither an adjustable backstay nor a cunningham. The only control points on sail shape are halyard tension and outhaul. How do you adjust the draft on your boat? Do you perhaps have the performance version which has more knobs?

Thx
David

[sitara]

Hi David,
No just the standard version. I use the outhaul to adjust draft. I sometimes think about adding extra controls but as I am cruising I am happy with a reasonable sail shape that is probably not perfect. The sail has now done three seasons so it will be interesting to see how it holds up as it gets older. I did add an extra headsail with about 100% overlap which is great if the wind is over 10-12 knots upwind.

[jdl01]

Hi Jos,
Current thinking among the race/cruise set is to have 2 upper full battens and 2 lower partial battens to produce a powerful upwind leech and a full belly when in 160 degree downwind mode. For the average guy, full battens all the way provide best sail management both up and when dousing. Do not go cheap on your luff cars and make sure they have adjustable batten tensioners. Mainsail depth or curve is an under discussed power factor but full batten tension is a great tool along with outhaul and vang to create that in the grove shape. With mid boom mainsheets, the vang is especialy important.

[rene460]

On the subject of other mainsail controls, my SO30i also has only halliard tension and an out haul adjustment with a loose footed main.

I suggest that the Cunningham is not fundamentally different to halliard tension, as it simply adjusts luff tension.  It has the advantage that it is easily rigged up with more pulleys for more mechanical advantage if you are having trouble achieving adequate tension with the halliard.  However if you are happy with your Luff tension and not moved to playing with it as you go, it does not seem necessary.  The main reason for its use is in racing where you are constrained in luff length by the black bands, you can have full height with a loose luff, and still increase luff tension with the Cunningham when required.

My previous boat had an adjustable back stay, but it also had a 3/4 rig and a bendy mast and back stay tension was quite important And easy to achieve.  With the SO30i, the mast cannot really be considered bendy, and the need to readjust the back stay tension seems minimal.  The limited mast  curve available seems to have minimal effect on the sail shape compared with outhaul and perhaps batten tension.

I know some make careful adjustments to their rig tune for different conditions, but I suspect rarely after leaving the dock, and I do not doubt the effort they have put into determining the best settings for different conditions.  For cruising, a boat length or two over a days sail is neither here, and perhaps not worth the complexity in my opinion.

rene460

April 2019 update - it seems I am mistaken in my understanding of the effect of the Cunningham eye, check my reply on 26 April 2019 for my more recent understanding.  Still open to being educated further!

[gowell101]

Go for the fully battened.

I bought new sails last year...China Sail Factory through local sailmaker.
SO 40.3
Fully battened, 5, with bat cars.
MXL design. Moulded string. Loose foot.

Love them, great shapes.
Easy to hoist and flake into the bag.

Went for a cunningham eye as well. Using 2nd reef Spinlock to control.
Skalpel



Attachment Deleted

[krawall]

Loose footed is standard anyway...

I had always had full battens (other than on my really racy sails I had on my old 36i for a season - before sold the boat) and never had a problem raising it.

You will hear that you'll be a bit slower than with semi-full battens, but not sure this is academic or really measurable in practice.

Full battens take more care of the sail and make it easier to handle. I never had a problem raising it (and we normally jump it to the top with man power only - read: one at the mast and pulling down, on in the cockpit hauling the slack in.) We always bring the top of the head within half a meter if not less and use the power wich for the last few centimeters. But... I always have cars on the sail and not just slides. That's what I specify when buying the sail. It's a bit more expensive than just slides, but not really much so and makes a tremendous difference in raising (and dropping!) the sail.

[dda]

Hi,

I realise this post is a bit old now but I was looking for some advice on the best batcar (roller) type car to retro fit to a Sailman 3000 full battern main. I found that the slides that it was provided with do not work with the full batterns even with no tension, the top one starts to jam at around the half-way mark on my Sparcraft Ocean rig, (SO 32.2).
There seems to be a few systems on the market - Rutgerson, Selden etc... I wondered if anyone had any experience in fitting these and if they were successful.

thanks Drew

[Deleted]

Apr 25, 2019 11:09:11 GMT dda said:

Hi,

I realise this post is a bit old now but I was looking for some advice on the best batcar (roller) type car to retro fit to a Sailman 3000 full battern main. I found that the slides that it was provided with do not work with the full batterns even with no tension, the top one starts to jam at around the half-way mark on my Sparcraft Ocean rig, (SO 32.2).
There seems to be a few systems on the market - Rutgerson, Selden etc... I wondered if anyone had any experience in fitting these and if they were successful.







Hi dda,

I got the Ronstan Ballslide system when I purchased a new North main with full battens. These require no external track as they fit inside the existing slide groove, but have ball bearings that take the load and ride outside the groove on the mast.

[zaphod]

The mainsail on my 39i had partial battens, and downright horrific shape. I sent the sail in to North for a recut, and they also converted the top 3 battens to full. It made a huge difference to the shape of the sail, and stabilized the leech nicely. I do think I will have them put a full batten in the bottom as well.

They didnt use bat cars, just slugs, and I have no problems hoisting or dropping the sail. The full battens also make dropping the sail into the stack pack even easier than it was before. Just drop the sail, straighten out the folds at the luff, and zip it up!

[rene460]

Hi dda,

I’m glad you revisited this thread, made me reread earlier posts and gives me the opportunity to update one of my earlier posts.

I have described my batten and bat car experience earlier in this thread, and still am happy with the system years later.

I suspect the issue is cars vs slides (which may or may not have plastic balls incorporated to make them slide a bit easier.  If you go for cars, it is probably more important to have the cars matched to the track than which cars you go for.  If there are cars available which work well with your sail track, they are the ones to go for.

I don’t see a problem with the half battens providing the sail is in good shape and there is no sharp kink in the shape at the end of the batten.  The full battens are heavy, which is probably the main disadvantage, but they do help hold the smoothe curve from luff to leech, and the batcars definitely involve much less friction that the slides I have previously experiencedwith slides.

I mentioned above that I thought there was little difference between a Cunningham eye and extra halliard tension unless you are constrained by black bands.  I have recently had explained to me the error in my ways and have just had a Cunningham eye fitted.  I have rigged it up with four to one tackle and tried it out on a near perfect day.  

It seems that while the halliard tension pulls pulls mostly on the luff rope, the Cunningham pulls directly on the cloth.  The effect is subtle with modern cloth that does not stretch much, but it seems that the subtle change in sail shape caused by that tension helps the shape at the top of the sail, of all places.  It is not intuitive to me, but yesterday I had the all leech telltales flying for more of the time than I can remember achieving before.  The top one previously nearly always defeated me.  Some tension on the Cunningham also removed a small wrinkle running from the luff end of the bottom batten towards the clew.  Very small effects, but I am sure worthwhile, though whether the benefit will ever be noticeable in my cruising activity I don’t know.  

And of course, it is possible that the adjustments I have made to the rigid vang setup, combined with the extra attention I was paying to trim was the real cause.  Still, the experiment feels worthwhile.  It will be interesting to see how I get on over the longer term.

Also interested to know which way you go on the batten question.

Rene460

[jdl01]

Hi Rene460,
Your revised thinking on the cunningham is the right way to go. When using just halyard tension to remove the sag at the tack you end up over tensioning the upper portion of the sail as the friction of the luff rope or cars and slugs prevents the even distribution of the added tension. This pulls the centre of effort too far forward in the upper sail, distorting your leech shape. Less halyard tension up top fixes this while the cunningham picks up the slack in the lower sail.
Cheers - Jim

[rene460]

Thanks Jim, it is always good to hear that I am not imagining things.  That friction description makes sense, though with the bat cars, the cars definitely want to fall down.  The actual movement of the eye seems barely detectable, but it must change the stresses in the cloth so there will be movement somewhere.  My thin shell/membrane analysis skills are just not up to determining where.  It was great to see the sail shape looking so good.  Not that it was bad before, just could not get that top leech tell tale to behave with any consistency.

I had never seen the issue explained until recently a friend returned to the area after being interstate since before I bought this boat.  I need to get him on board more often, there is always more to learn.

Rene460

[dda]

Hi All,

after a bit of investigation I a device made by Rutgerson called a Pressure absorbing slide. 

www.rutgerson.se/product/pressure-absorbing-slide/

With the standard Sailman slides that were fitted I could only get the sail about half way up before the sail would dam in the track. Even by just replacing the slide on the top batten it can now be raised to the top without jamming. 
However I'm thinking that it is worth doing all 4 to reduce the pressure in the masthead sheave to a minimum.
These appear to work really well and are reasonably priced at £15 each.
I've yet to test the sail but I'm expecting to get a considerable improvement of the current main which was the 20 year old original!!

Thanks Drew