Fully battened main questions?

tom_sail

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I'm looking at a fully battened main for my hunter horizon 26. Which I want to price up at the London boat show.
I have done a bit of searching on here as well as the hunter forums, yet I still have a few questions.

Will I have to purchase a stackpak? I'm not very keen on them. At the moment I have lazy jacks and flake the main.

If I understand right I can get the new sail fitted with sail slides with a sort of wheeled cart that takes the pressure of the batten. So as I understand I don't need a mast track I can just use the original groove up the mast which the current sail slides fit into.

I'm planning on kemp or Hyde sails. What sort of price am I looking at? other horizon 26 owners have paid from £700 for a cruising fully battened main to £1000 for a performance cruising sail. But that was a few years ago.

Advice would be very much appreciated thanks.
 

Pye_End

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Will I have to purchase a stackpak?

No. Lazyjacks fine.

So as I understand I don't need a mast track I can just use the original groove up the mast which the current sail slides fit into.

Yes. There are options for slides. Depends how much you want to spend. The sailmaker should be able to advise on different options and prices. For a 26 foot the slide doesn't need to be too complex.

I'm planning on kemp or Hyde sails. What sort of price am I looking at? other horizon 26 owners have paid from £700 for a cruising fully battened main to £1000 for a performance cruising sail. But that was a few years ago.

Depends on the spec of the sail, but likely to be more!
 

wilkinsonsails

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If you have the z spar mast ,with out the dowling sliders,its possible to use the Rutgertson wheeled sliders .You may need to trim them down for the mast gate, as the hole isnt quite long enough.
These sliders connect to a batten box with the standard M10 threaded stud,taking the compression of the batten through to the wheels.
The sail will be fine with just the lazy jacks,and normal sail cover.
Conventional short batten sail should be in the region of £750.00 then plus £250 for full battens and cars.Thats two rows reefs.
Cindy
 

Twister_Ken

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When buying a new main a coup;e of years back I asked for a fully batened main, but North suggested 3 full length battens (at top) and too long battens which finish short of the mast at the bottom. Reason was it lets the bottom of the sail luff when your trying to loose a bit of power in a gust. Seems to work well.

You can see the bottom battens in this shot:

Snowbird16-5-10crop.jpg
 

mcframe

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I'm looking at a fully battened main for my hunter horizon 26. Which I want to price up at the London boat show.
I have done a bit of searching on here as well as the hunter forums, yet I still have a few questions.

Will I have to purchase a stackpak? I'm not very keen on them. At the moment I have lazy jacks and flake the main.

If I understand right I can get the new sail fitted with sail slides with a sort of wheeled cart that takes the pressure of the batten. So as I understand I don't need a mast track I can just use the original groove up the mast which the current sail slides fit into.

I'm planning on kemp or Hyde sails. What sort of price am I looking at? other horizon 26 owners have paid from £700 for a cruising fully battened main to £1000 for a performance cruising sail. But that was a few years ago.

Advice would be very much appreciated thanks.

Fully battened main and foam luff jenny from Sanders (~£700 each in 2007; Hood Dacron, Sailman 3000 battens†) on an H27 here:
http://www.mcframe.org/scots.jpg
Stackpack from bloke on Hayling a couple of years earlier - makes life easier - I keep mine permanently rigged with /just/ the right amount of sag.

I'd buy the same again (yeah, and get the genoa car forward next time my mate takes pictures††)

If you're still on OE sails, then you're in for a nice surprise - I can bore about the fun of a Parasail if you like...

† Needed a slight bit of Dremel work to open up existing mast slot, and some McWhotsit lube a couple of times a year to keep it running smoothly.
†† note how the slot stops my battle ensign from breaking until the last 1/4 yard ;-)
 

reeac

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Cars for a f.b. mainsail

When we ordered a f.b. mainsail for our SAdler 29 in Winter 2003/4 Parker & Kay recommended SDA cars which don't have wheels but slide within the original mast track. They look very simple in design but have a facility for adjusting batten compression and work well albeit requiring occasional cleaning of the track to keep things running smoothly.
 

tom_sail

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Thanks for the replies.

I'm glad I won't need a stackpak although I may think about purchasing one in the future, it's just extra cost ATM.

Twister_Ken, that set up looks perfect I like the idea of being able to spill wind more easily. My current main is the original and doesn't even have battens. The pockets are there but the previous owner never fitted battens. In heavy winds it's an absolute pig to sail, I find it almost impossible to flatten the sail and when I reef the leach likes to do crazy things with no battens.

If work is needed to be done on the mast slot, will my current sail slides still operate correctly? I would still like to use my current sail as a spare if ever need.

One last thing, when sailing in light winds and tacking has the top batten got a tendency to stay as it was on the previous tack and a good pump of the sail is required to make it "pop". I have sailed ,many fully battened dinghies and one j80 and this was a problem although not a huge one.

Many thanks
 

Aurai

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Fully Battened Main (Stackpack)

As:

Someone who switched from stackpack to loose cover, clipped underneath. With the stackpack we tended to get in a tangle and you are still left with reasonable windage in the stack until you tidy it up.

Now, if we need a rapid lowering, we can just drop the sail and wrap it up quickly in a rolled "sausage" and tie it to the boom, to flake at leisure. Then the sail cover uses robust and simple clips, NO ZIP. As it was zip failure on the stackpack that lead to me thinking about a sail cover.

With crew this keeps everything simple and practical with less to go wrong.

Good luck
 

BAtoo

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On my Sadler 32 with FB main I had slides without rollers just flat "feet" on outside of the track and normal lugs in the track. Worked well - and much better than the cheap rollers there before. Recommended by John Parker of Parker & Kay.
 

ditchcrawler

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I had new sails from Hyde in 07 with a fully battened main in 7.18 Challenge Performance Sailcloth using Sailman 3000 batten cars.They came and measured my boat and it performs well.I use a stackpack system but previously just had lazyjacks.I also had a triradial laminate genoa which is superb.Hyde moved their production to The Phillippines many years ago and you can see the production facility on their website.I liked the fact that they were open and honest about this.Some sailmakers are having sails made in the far east and finishing them off here.
 

BlueSkyNick

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When buying a new main a coup;e of years back I asked for a fully batened main, but North suggested 3 full length battens (at top) and too long battens which finish short of the mast at the bottom. Reason was it lets the bottom of the sail luff when your trying to loose a bit of power in a gust. Seems to work well.

You can see the bottom battens in this shot:

Snowbird16-5-10crop.jpg

Best to remove handles from winches when not in use. ;)
 

PetiteFleur

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I had a fully battened main on my previous boat, a Jaguar 27. I liked it but had the standard white plastic sliders as usually found on sails and it was an absolute B***** to drop the main - I had to haul it down by hand. I chatted to Parker & Kay at Suffolk Yacht Harbour and he fitted different larger black plastic sliders which worked a dream - as soon as you were head to wind and released the halliard the sail just dropped instantly! Best £100 I'd spent in a long time and no fancy expensive roller batten cars.
Oh and I had a zip up stack pack which I recommend but make sure all the zip is fully covered when zipped up as the zip tape material is not UV resistant - why can't they make them with polyester tape instead of polypropilene?
 

tom_sail

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Best to remove handles from winches when not in use. ;)

At least the ensign is correctly proportioned To the boat ;)

As:

Someone who switched from stackpack to loose cover, clipped underneath. With the stackpack we tended to get in a tangle and you are still left with reasonable windage in the stack until you tidy it up.

Now, if we need a rapid lowering, we can just drop the sail and wrap it up quickly in a rolled "sausage" and tie it to the boom, to flake at leisure. Then the sail cover uses robust and simple clips, NO ZIP. As it was zip failure on the stackpack that lead to me thinking about a sail cover.

With crew this keeps everything simple and practical with less to go wrong.

Good luck

That's my exact feeling. I don't get along with zips and I can see the zip failing.

I had a fully battened main on my previous boat, a Jaguar 27. I liked it but had the standard white plastic sliders as usually found on sails and it was an absolute B***** to drop the main - I had to haul it down by hand. I chatted to Parker & Kay at Suffolk Yacht Harbour and he fitted different larger black plastic sliders which worked a dream - as soon as you were head to wind and released the halliard the sail just dropped instantly! Best £100 I'd spent in a long time and no fancy expensive roller batten cars.
Oh and I had a zip up stack pack which I recommend but make sure all the zip is fully covered when zipped up as the zip tape material is not UV resistant - why can't they make them with polyester tape instead of polypropilene?

Getting the slides right is vital for me. My current slides need a good tugging to get them both up and down. So they sound perfect!
 

mcframe

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If work is needed to be done on the mast slot, will my current sail slides still operate correctly? I would still like to use my current sail as a spare if ever need.

If it's the same as my mast, then yes - it was just lengthening the slot gate by a ~5mm 'cos the Sailman 3000 black sliders are a little bit longer than the OE white one. Once it's locked and loaded, it's as normal.

Exact dimensions are probably on the web - somewhere - I can't speak for the Rutgertson wheeled ones.

I'll have you know my *backstay* ensign is perfectly proportioned :)
 

MoodySabre

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Consider going past Crusader sails while you are at the show. They have a damned good reputation.

The fully battened main they made for my Oceanis is excellent.

Ditto for my Moody 31. They use a combination of ordinary slugs and Sailman 3000 slugs that fit in the normal mast groove. A bit of McLube on the track and sliders and it goes up and down just fine. No wheeled cars necessary on a small boat.
 

Robin

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Also highly recommend Crusader. When they made a fully battened main for our W33 years back there was a choice of the special slide slugs (they have a flange on both sides so resist 'push' as well as 'pull' loads) or of wheeled cars. Which one they advised back then depended on the mast section, IIRC masts with flatter aft sections in way of the track being better with the little roller cars and more oval sections as ours was more suited to the special sliders. We never had a problem raising or lowering the sail although I used to wax the track each year, using a soft beeswax furniture polish glooped in the groove and on the first slider, then hauled up and down a few times. With the waxed groove that main would drop under it's own weight once the halyard was released.

Our later and last boat had an external track with proper roller bearing cars for the fully battened main (also had one made by Crusader, to replace the knackered North one, and superb). An external track and cars would be a very expensive option and unnecessary on a smaller boat with a smaller lighter mainsail.

Personal opinion is go fully battened and full length on all. The strain on batten pockets is always on the inner end and that strain I believe is removed with the full length battens fitting onto the slider fittings, as opposed to being a more basic fabric end stop. As I said personal preference.

A FB main should tack cleanly except maybe in zilch winds, if not I would suspect too much tension in the adjustment which should really only be enough to take out any horizontal creasing along the pocket.

We had stakpaks on the W33 which worked fine but the totally enclosed sail tended to become mildewed I believe because of lack of airflow. On the SL41 that replaced it and which had a much bigger sail we had the lazyjacks but used a standard sail cover with an open base and didn't suffer the mildew. Our lazyjacks could be released at the mast hoist end and pulled down to lay along the boom once the sail was down and the sail ties added. The time to put the sail away was slightly longer in that we had to add the sail ties and to unrolled the cover but we preferred it, again personal choice.
 

tom_sail

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Ditto for my Moody 31. They use a combination of ordinary slugs and Sailman 3000 slugs that fit in the normal mast groove. A bit of McLube on the track and sliders and it goes up and down just fine. No wheeled cars necessary on a small boat.

After looking on their website the sail man 3000 slugs look the best. I'll try and get a quote with these slugs in mind.

Also highly recommend Crusader. When they made a fully battened main for our W33 years back there was a choice of the special slide slugs (they have a flange on both sides so resist 'push' as well as 'pull' loads) or of wheeled cars. Which one they advised back then depended on the mast section, IIRC masts with flatter aft sections in way of the track being better with the little roller cars and more oval sections as ours was more suited to the special sliders. We never had a problem raising or lowering the sail
although I used to wax the track each year, using a soft beeswax furniture polish glooped in the groove and on the first slider, then hauled up and down a few times. With the waxed groove that main would drop under it's own weight once the halyard was released.

Our later and last boat had an external track with proper roller bearing cars for the fully battened main (also had one made by Crusader, to replace the knackered North one, and superb). An external track and cars would be a very expensive option and unnecessary on a smaller boat with a smaller lighter mainsail.

Personal opinion is go fully battened and full length on all. The strain on batten pockets is always on the inner end and that strain I believe is removed with the full length battens fitting onto the slider fittings, as opposed to being a more basic fabric end stop. As I said personal preference.

A FB main should tack cleanly except maybe in zilch winds, if not I would suspect too much tension in the adjustment which should really only be enough to take out any horizontal creasing along the pocket.

We had stakpaks on the W33 which worked fine but the totally enclosed sail tended to become mildewed I believe because of lack of airflow. On the SL41 that replaced it and which had a much bigger sail we had the lazyjacks but used a standard sail cover with an open base and didn't suffer the mildew. Our lazyjacks could be released at the mast hoist end and pulled down to lay along the boom once the sail was down and the sail ties added. The time to put the sail away was slightly longer in that we had to add the sail ties and to
unrolled the cover but we preferred it, again personal choice.

Thankyou for the detailed post. Crusader sails completely flew over my head. after sailing on few other boats with crusader sails I have always been impressed with the shape and quality of the material
I'll certainly look at them at them in boat show.
 

Boathook

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My fully battened main was supplied by Quay Sails at Poole. The battens are on to a fitting similar to the Rutgerson® "BATTCAR" System. It might even be an earlier version. Else where ordinary slides are used. This system meant that no modifications were required to the Kemp / Selden mast track. The main goes up easily and normally comes down by un-tying the haliard as long as you are into the wind. A silicone furniture polish (Mr Sheen for me) helps a great deal in reducing friction in the mast 'track' and is normally applied at the beginning of the season and then halfway through.
 
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