Has anyone had any experience with stiffening battens.
I'm thinking about stiffening the back quarter or so of the bottom 2 battens in my Ezzy SEs. The SEs are pretty typical of wave sails in that when they get overpowered they slow down. The draft moves back and they get super draggy. I'm thinking that stiffening the ends of the battens may stabilise the draft somewhat and improve their range. I don't know if it will work though.
Yep it works, but leave the bottom batten as is, and do the next 2, and probably more than the last 1/3. I was told how much, and it varies with the 2 battens, think it's something like 1/2 way for the batten above the boom, and a bit less than that for the next one up.
I've done my 5.3 and 4.7 and certainly seems to help, but I haven't sailed them enough like that to be able to say how much.
I've now got a 5.2 fully cambered sail, so I'm thinking of stiffening either my wife's 4.5 or my 4.2 wave sails, for the real strong days.
Get a Tushingham Rock as 3 of the battens have that carbon draft lock on them makes a heap of difference with out them when I've had to replace a batten without the draft lock.
What year model Ezzys are we talking about here? I've got '07 and '08 wave SE's and unless you're sailing in a cyclone holding up a 5.8 the draft deadset does not move.
Hi Not Wal , I have done it before and it works really well . You will probably need to do more than the back 1/4 though , probably at least 1/3 and possibly 1/2 .
The easiest way is to get some glass or carbon tube ( carbon will be stiffer) that slides over the rod . That way you can remove it easily if you don't like the result .
I did it on my 5.8 KA Kult . I hate changing down sails and wanted to milk as much range out of the sail as I could . It definitely got me noticably more top end without a huge sacrifice in low end , and yes the sail is less draggy with a flatter foil shape in back half .
I've just checked the ones I did, after being instructed by the local guru.
batten above boom - tube batten 1/2 way, next batten up - tube batten 2/3 of the way.
So Decrep, are you just sliding a glass tubular batten over a round rod?
I did a rough deflection test a while back to compare the stiffness of an Ezzy infinity batten (rectangular section glass) to an Aerotech pulltruded glass tube and they were very similar in stiffness. The tube was just a tiny bit stiffer.
I think you'd need a very big tube to slide over those rectangular rods.
I was thinking I'd have to epoxy carbon onto the rods. A bloke about here who is a bit of a wizard with carbon (he built his own masts) recommended bonding carbon on with epoxy and taping it. I was going to chase him for details.
hi decrep what's your opinion on replacing tubular battens on cammed sails to keep the same draft? a shop owner gave me a set of 5battens he over ordered and i resurrected a fairly old sail with 2broken battens near the cams..i tried to make sure the part where the tube tapers to flat glass form the draft is roughly the same..since they're not as precise as the originals would you rather be shorter forward towards the cams or longer away from it
Maybe try and get your hands on an old slalom sail or something. Go and see the local boat sailmaker. It just seems like stacks of work to be playing around with stiffening battens with carbon or extra tube etc.
Another thought, it might be good to keep the original battens from your sail in case what your trying doesnt work.
