About ready to reassemble our flat-sailed junk rig, it occurs to me that I might do well to put the backing battens (plastic conduit ~19mm OD) on the mast side of the sail with the fendering (probably polythene water pipe ~ 37mm ID) lashed eccentrically to it through holes. (Smooth, with no lashings against the mast.)
I'd put the round aluminium battens on the off-mast side. This is opposite to the way they were, and to the other sails I can remember that have backing battens. I won't have batten pockets.
Good reasons:
- Only plastic against the mast.
- Space for air or sound-deadening foam or something in the eccentric space between the fat fender-pipe and skinny little backing batten, for softer, quieter knocks.
- Batten can't be dented by mast.
- Batten easier to inspect and to remove, straighten, replace with no fendering to work around.
- Fender easier to replace without batten to work around.
- Same fendering on foresail and main. (Main's Al battens are larger diameter; backing battens are the same on both sails.)
Bad reasons:
Somebody knows. Please let me know, before I realise them a short time from now and have to report my failure to the JRA... and then be rightly told it was tried in 1982, and 'Don't you read your old JRA newsletters before you fall asleep?'...
The other change I'm making here is to stop using leather for fendering, as it was pretty abrasive, for all its lovely shippy creaking sounds.
Cheers,
Kurt
Forgot to say... The batten parrels will be located with light lines through grommets, so no problem there. This issue is discussed in the recent 'Aluminium Battens' topic. My solution is no improvement, just different and hard to describe..