Broken Batten - Repair Advice

Looking for repair advice guys. Had the misfortune of breaking a batten (Just above the Boom) whilst exiting the water yesterday.




I have had a look through all my spare parts and really dont have a replacement I can just slip in (Have an old T4 Tube, but the longest I have looks to be 200mm shorter that the HSM GPS broken one above). Is the batten tube simply repairable by wraping in glass cloth or is a new batten in order? Thanks Guru's.

Some batten tubes come in two diameters , the smaller fitting nicely into the larger . If u have some smaller tube that suits then it's easy as Shifu says . You can chop , repair , extend all u like . Superglue works great but make sure parts are all ready as u have about one second or less to get it right . Maximum of three beers before attempting this

I would do like the first guy suggested, just cut the split part off the tube, make a longer solid piece for the end, put it all back together, its not going to make any difference to the sail shape or performance where it broke, sails are flat there anyway.

Gee , I can't say **** or ****teenth , **** as in quality or in this case able to handle a acceptable amount of abuse and ****teenth as is measurement !
Or..
An even finer measurement , a bees dick !

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mathew said..

Imax1 said..
Additional questions .....
What sail is it and how are the battens tightened ?
This batten will always take the ****. Boom cutaways sound good to save a ****teenth in swing weight but make it fragile.
If your up hauling and the sail hits the sand = busted batten .
And if your an expert this same batten will hit something = busted batten.
If it's a cammed sail it only gets worse !
Ive busted yet another batten in my V8 s ( that's no 4 ) and they didn't touch anything , I've even broken the second top batten , how the hell does that happen ???

Cut-outs are completely *not* about solving swing-weight. Where did you hear that?

It is about reducing the boom length, for a given span. That has the the effect of reducing the lateral-movement of the centre-of-effort, and allows the leach to be looser all the way to the boom (without having negative outhaul).

Ive read that plenty of times in magazines when sails started doing this both in write ups and advertisements.
" you can use a smaller boom or have it on a smaller setting making the sail rotate easier when jybing , feeling lighter to flick around in transitions " ( or something like that , ). I do believe this because ive had two North Rams 7.8 one year apart one with cutout one without. Its probably in my mind ( thats how gimmicks work on the mind ) , but i thought it felt easier to flip the sail in a jybe with the cutout , but only just , it is however more fragile. ( it could also be because the sail is one year more modern ).
Ezzy among others seem to make nice sails that have a loose leach that twists nicely without a cutout.
I remember a couple years ago NP going one step further and having that hole in the clew area. That was meant to be the ants pants but they dropped that idea pretty quickly because it was fiddly , fragile and a pain in the ass. I had one .
Anyway i cant see how a cutout helps the leach twist any differently , the solid batten directly above the boom holding it all there doesnt flex in that part .
I believe the main reasons are ;
So wave sailors dont drag the end in waves
To get a marginally lighter swing weight when flipping the sail
I could be wrong.

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Imax1 said..

Ezzy among others seem to make nice sails that have a loose leach that twists nicely without a cutout.
I remember a couple years ago NP going one step further and having that hole in the clew area. That was meant to be the ants pants but they dropped that idea pretty quickly because it was fiddly , fragile and a pain in the ass. I had one .
Anyway i cant see how a cutout helps the leach twist any differently , the solid batten directly above the boom holding it all there doesnt flex in that part .
I believe the main reasons are ;
So wave sailors dont drag the end in waves
To get a marginally lighter swing weight when flipping the sail
I could be wrong.

If you look at footage from coming from behind the boom, you can definitely see some effect on the leach [ of the boom-cutout sails ]. But since you think Ezzy's have nice twist, then I think there is someone here that can sell you some realestate on the Moon.

Wave / freestyle sails dont have boom-cutouts - yet that group of sailors do care about swing weight [ granted those sails are already quite small ]. If that feature made a difference to swing weight, they would want to take advantage of it. Instead a tighter-leach [ than slalom sailing ] is often useful.

It broke right at the weak spot above the clew, the sail wants to hinge there due to it's design. Not the first broken batten I've seen in that same spot.
It's not a sail brand thing, many different brands have that same design, with the same problem.
However you fix or replace the batten, I'd do some re-enforcement at that spot, maybe slip in a rectangular piece of semi-flexible plastic, batten pocket wide, and about 15cm long, into the tear, before the batten. Or just make the batten a lot stiffer at that spot.