Given my concerns about the added momentum and chafe with full-length battens on junk-rigged boats, you would think that I would be against them on all boats. But, then again, I’m a big believer in this quote:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…
Ralph Waldo Emerson
So let’s take a look at full-length battens for mainsails on Bermuda-rigged boats, both the disadvantages and benefits.
Lets start with the former:
Hi John,
Agree completely.
All points are important, but the one I most often appreciate is that when things get boisterous and I am reefing and/or dousing the main: the sail settles comfortably contained on top of the boom in my 3-fall lazy-jacks system (40 foot boat and 5 battens in the main) and I can forget about it and neaten things up later if wished.
I also like the ability to adjust the tension on the battens (with my Antal slippery track batten cars) to achieve the shape I want or to take out some bunched-up cloth. This may be more important with Dacron cloth than my HydraNet whose shape has not changed much.
Also, in the picture, I notice what looks like 4 battens in the jib: can you say more about those?
Thanks, My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
Hi Dick,
The battens in the jib, vertical to allow for roller furling in this case (required by J/109 class rules), are often used by racing boats particularly in blade type sails, to improve leach shape, but I don’t think I would recommend them for general cruising.
Hi John,
A few more positives we enjoy with full battens, for your list:
When luffing to hoist, reef or pinch up under sail, I cannot remember our mainsail ever flogging even in +35 knots, but then we have 6 full length battens with in-boom reefing. Rather, the sail gracefully inverts with any backwind pressure.Full length battens preserve our sail shape and resist the tendency for the sail draft to migrate aft in the sail with time. This, with the absence of flogging, means our mainsail shape still looks as new, after 12 years hard use – I should mention we have a hi-tensile cruising laminate which helps.When heaving-to, our mainsail naturally back-winds. This inverts the sail acting as a brake. We love the immediate calm and absence of noise this brings.Full length battens allow us to run a deep roach, common on many cats. Our 2nd owner production mono came with its short mast as standard, and so Doyle sails proposed a deep roach for our mainsail in 2013, where our roach extends beyond our backstay. Harken anti-chafe rollers up the backstay ensure the mainsail tacks and gybes in light airs. Once the wind is around 18 knots, the first reef sees the mainsail clear our backstay. A great way to add sail area and light air performance for very little extra cost.Full length battens enable us to evenly twist off the top 1/3 of the mainsail in stronger winds like a skiff, maintaining power down low and reducing heel. We find this especially a great technique when close hauled in light airs, or reaching in stronger airs, using our Code 0. Applying mainsail twist using short battens, in my experience doesn’t work well and in some cases, induces horrible crease lines.Can’t think of any negatives.
Hi Rob,
Yes, once the wind is up, full length battens seem to reduce flogging. What I was referring to is that in very light, or no wind, full length battens make slatting from boat roll worse due to momentum, so it’s important to get the sail down. That’s true of any sail, but with full length battens even more so.
Also good point on added roach.
One point I disagree a bit on is twist. There is no fundamental reason that I know of that requires full length battens to twist the mainsail correctly, although, I guess that ability will be available for longer and work better in a full length batten sail due to a flatter leach, particularly higher up, as the sail ages, although, to be fair, we can get that ability with a single full length top batten as on our J/109.
Completely agree – my new (fully battened Main has changed my life!
Storing spare battens seemed an issue but a friend suggested “inside the boom” and that works nicely.
Hi Clive,
Good tip, we used to do the same on the M&R 56.
Hi John can you expand on the negatives for vertical jib battens for non overlapping headsails?
Hi Jim,
I just think the benefits of vertical battens (small) don’t justify the complications and potential problems (broken batten, etc) on a cruising boat. But if you are a performance freak, go for it…I might do just that!
fan of full length battens here. Sail shape longevity with full length battens is way better than short battens. Re. the weight aloft comment, technically yes, but it’s so small. My full length battens on my 40 footer weight maybe 4 pounds? so save maybe 2ish pounds about 30 pecent of the hoist aloft? If you can notice that… I got a bridge to sell ya.
I’ve always believed the pros significantly outweigh the cons when it comes to full battened versus soft battened mainsails for both serious racing and cruising programs. That opinion was primarily formed racing multihulls and sailboards and followed me into my cruising journey. On a previous Corsair trimaran we owned before our current Dragonfly cruising trimaran, I had a fully battened racing mainsail last competitively for nine years. That boat had a roller furling boom and we would remove the furled mainsail/boom and stow it below in the boat’s cabin when it was not in use. I would expect no less than 10-12 years of life with no significant decline in performance for any properly built full batten cruising mainsail. And in many cases, if you have to replace the mainsail, you can re-use the battens. On our Dragonfly, we replaced the stock battens Sobstad used for our mainsail because they were too soft and we were getting “S” bending with stiffer battens from RBS. On the longer lower battens (4-7), RBS did a clever two piece design with a coupler that saved shipping costs and will allow us to re-use at least half of the batten if we replace the mainsail in the future with a mainsail design that has different batten lengths.
Not sure if this is applicable to a monohull, but in most instances in light air and lump, we can stop the slapping around of our mainsail with a bit more sheet tension and use of the preventer and that’s given the beam of our tri inherently has less rolling motion. That can keep us sailing comfortably in many instances where others would lower sails and start motoring.
Hi Bob,
Thanks for the fill on multihulls. We used to do the same thing with a tackle to stabilize the boom, but once the roll gets past a certain point even if the boom is stable the battens start to crash back and forth and that puts a lot of impact load on the the tackle, so the sail should come down.
By the way, I would qualify the idea that a Tri, or any multi hull, has intrinsically less rolling motion. That’s true in short period relatively small waves, but once the the wave length exceeds the multi-hull beam, the boat will reorient to the wave angle on every wave, back and front, resulting in a very quick and quite violent motion. A mono will tend to damp this out and so have a less violent roll, albeit possibly of higher amplitude, although that depends on wave period in relation to the boats natural roll period, and hull shape etc.
This was explained to me by a naval architect. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a multi-hater, and in fact nearly bought a sister to your boat.
John,
Is the violent motion you reference above when you are running very deep? There’s a YT video of a Dragonfly 35 delivery from Germany to the Canary Islands and part of the video is them running nearly dead downwind in big wind and seas in the Bay of Biscay and the motion of the boat looks pretty smooth and steady. Our experience has been limited to the upper Gulf of Mexico which is relatively shallow and so the wave periods remain relatively short. Our autopilot so far has been pretty happy for any broad to deep reaching we’ve done so far (highest wind strength we’ve sailed the boat in being mid to high 20’s, never been in over 30 knots with this boat). I’d say biggest seas we’ve been in have not exceeded 2 meters in height and longest period about the length of the boat (that was a very fun day BTW).
I just need to buy a used Ultim and foil clear over the damn things. Problem solved!
Hi Bob,
As it was explained to me, the biggest and most uncomfortable issue is when the wave train is from about 45 degrees off the bow to the same off the stern, also I would guess that the the problem is worse on cats than tris because the form stability on tris is a bit lower due to partial immersion of the lee ama as pressure on the rig goes up, which will cause some damping.
In these conditions a mono is the big winner just because it has lower form stability and therefore the sail damps the roll better. But on the other hand in a shorter wave train the cat is the big comfort winner, particularly motoring with no sail up.
It’s interesting that cat fans will get down on tris because they can heal more for this reason, but I actually see that as a feature not a bug since it will somewhat damp the fast motion problem and also gives more warning that it’s time to reef before something bad happens. Bottom line, like most-all things around boats, form stability is a double edged sword.
Anyway, not dumping on cats, tris, or monos, just being clear that the often repeated myth that cats are always the most comfortable is just that. The real answer is, as always, it depends. Put a cat in the wrong wave train for it, and generally a mono (for example) will have less violent motion, but then there are other conditions where the cat will be more comfortable.
Of course all this assumes good design no matter how many hulls.
I feel an article coming on.
Let’s go halves on the Ultim, should be fun.
I’ve never had anything other than full battens. It’s a multihull thing, for reasons that would take a full post.
Downsides:
As for advantages:
Every main I replaced was due to gradual cloth deterioration all over. Unbattened sail (head sails), on the other hand, suffered from stretch and flogging and didn’t last nearly as long.
I don’t sail monohulls so I can say. But the open 60s seem to do well.
Hi Drew,
Good analysis. On the slippery track, I can see that it might not be necessary in your case, but on an offshore boat it is. The reason is reefing, and even more so, un-reefing without having to turn up into the wind. Of course this is boat size dependant with slippery track more important as the boat gets bigger.
I’m pretty sure of this in that I had full battens without a track on a 45 and 55 footers and in both cases reefing off the wind was very difficult, particularly offshore, albeit possible. Adding a slippery track made all the difference.