In mast furling - vertical battens

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cmedsailor

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Hello,
although I am not planning (hopefully) to change my in mast furling main sail by the end of the year could you comment / advice on some of the main sails with vertical battens? It seems that the cost of some (eg Elvstorm with the 3 mini battens) is not dramatically higher than without them. Do we gain anything besides a couple of meters extra sail area? What about furling / unfurling? Could it cause any problems?
Thanks
 
If the furl is uneven and the batten goes into the slot slightly off square it can cause problems. As long as you keep some tension on the outhaul as you furl all should be well.

I met one sailor who had a vertical batten break in mid-Atlantic. He was unable to remove or replace it because the pocket was only open at the top and he wasn't fit enough to climb the mast at sea.
 
I had a maxiroach vertically battened one and it was a PITA. Apart from jamming in the mast slot it really didn't add much roach and the sail never set very well anyway. Last year I extended my boom by 10 inches and had Kemp make me a flat sail without battens. There is no appreciable loss of performance and it reefs without jamming. If you want ultimate performance don't have in mast furling. If you want the convenience of in mast furling don't have battens.
 
I am quite happy with the current problem free main sail with no battens and also get very competitive in club races. So I guess I'll replace it with a normal sail again.
Thanks
 
[ QUOTE ]
I had a maxiroach vertically battened one and it was a PITA. Apart from jamming in the mast slot it really didn't add much roach and the sail never set very well anyway. Last year I extended my boom by 10 inches and had Kemp make me a flat sail without battens. There is no appreciable loss of performance and it reefs without jamming. If you want ultimate performance don't have in mast furling. If you want the convenience of in mast furling don't have battens.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would certainly go with that - even an overstretched baggy main will cause a jam, so with virtical battens....... I would rather not go there!
 
I had a Hood Vertec main on my last boat (8years) never had a problem. Tension on the outhaul going in with wind slightly of starboard bow to 'open' up the slot. Because of a cock-up when the boat was ordered we had the standard in-mast sail 'on-loan' for a period. The Vertec was considerable better. The batten pockets opened uip at the bottom and the batten was secured with a thin line between two loops.
 
We had an EasyReef in mast furling with MaxiRoach sail on our Sadler 29 and it worked perfectly. Easy to use, good shape. So often these systems give trouble because they are not set up properly, It is worth spending a bit of time and effort to ensure that the optimum set-upis achieved. Our sail never jammed and the only problem we had ( this is an early example)was that a Velcro strip on a batten pocket came adrift.
 
Yes you can indeed make them work OK but my contention is that you really don't get very much roach with them anyway and I got more area by increasing my boom length without battens so what the hell is the point?
 
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