Kurt Jon Ulmer wrote:

'Aphrodite' has separate panels in tracks. She's owned by Carl Bostek. Paul Thompson designed the rig. Annie Hill gave Paul major help setting up the rig, while I gave minor help and got to enjoy sea trials.

I designed Aphrodite's rig. Carl liked and wanted separate panels (since he had a Galant rig before, which has separate panels and he liked that part of the rig. Not any other aspect though) the premise being that if a panel was damaged, it would be easy to replace at sea.

I proposed three ways of connecting the panels:

1) lacing each to the other and to the batten.
2) Staggered batten pockets with the batten sliding through then as a pin      goes through a hinge.
3) Sail luff rope groove style track on the top and bottom of each batten.

Carl choice method 3 and the system has worked in so far that it holds the sail together and looks reasonably neat. However it has totally failed to meet one of its objectives. Namely to make it easy to replace a panel at sea.

To to insert or remove a panel requires a minimum of two people and preferably three (this is a big boat and the battens are 6.3M long and heavy). One person is needed at each end of the batten and one person to thread the bolt rope through. Actually, Annie and I initially set the rig up on our own  and the two of us managed but it was serious PT and we ended up each day totally exhausted (fortunately we still had enough strength to lift a wine glass :-) ). Kurt, joined us the second time we went up to Opua and his help was very, very much appreciated. It was not so minor either.

Having sailed a bit on Aphrodite and received reports from Annie, Carl and Kurt, I can say that the rig has been an overall success but there are most certainly many things that could be improved (LC's new rig has all the lessons learned incorporated plus plus).

The only reason I'd do separate panels today is if I did not have the space to be able to make a big sail in one piece. If I did so, I'd use method's one or two to join the panels, I'd not use three again. Sail tracks add far to much weight (doubled the weight of each batten) are expensive and actually make assembling the sail harder.

The the junk rig being so innately robust, I see little need to be able to replace a panel at sea. It's one of those ideas that sound good and seem good on paper but no real need for it exists in actuality.

Hi Brian & all,

I've a junk sail with eyelets for lace on battens, and was looking for a way of retro fitting batten pockets to make insertion / removal of the battens easier ( a single person job).  Separately, I'll upload a sketch "LACE ON BATTEN POCKETS" showing what I planned to do.  This might also provide a solution for fitting and removing battens while at sea.   

KW

 

David Tyler wrote:

No, to me it makes economic and practical sense to stop at stage one, sewing on a couple of strips of cloth - and calling them a batten pocket.

Yes, to me as well. It's hard to image a simpler, quicker or more efficient way of retaining a batten than putting on batten pockets using Arne's "Method B". Batten pockets are only bad if you close the end of the pocket, then the end of the batten tends to wear through. However, with open ends, it's a system thats hard to beat.

I have used "Method B" on my own sails.

Funny that - just broke Batten for the first time last weekend (bad gybe) took about 2 minutes to remove (from batten pocket) but i am sure it added many hours to sail construction.....