E-38 Main sail

Wondering if any 38 owners have opinions on reef points for the main. (how deep for 1 and 2). Ted, I re-read your mainsail thread, any new revelations or opinions? Is your bigger roach noticable?
I'm ordering a new main from Doyle and want to figure out the details. Think I'm going with the Pentex/carbon cloth. 5 full battens and Harken AA CB battcars.
Just thinking that I have the chance to spec the details when its built and would like to get all the details correct before I spend my retirement on a new main......

guess this should be in cruising/racing

Sorry wrong forum....

batten notes

I would still advise going with only two full length battens on top and two longer ones lower down -- then you wont need those very spendy batt cars.
Actually, I was not aware that any sailmakers were still pushing all-full-length-batten mains in this day and age.
Loren in PDX

mainsail

Hi Loren,
What are your thoughts on the 2+2 batten sail over the full batten? I sail J boats with that configuration and while i can probably shape them a little better, my friend's 105 with full battens is definitely not any slower in our conditions. He can really flatten it out when the wind goes to 28-30 knots in the slot(sf Bay) And his sail flogs a lot less, so it will last longer.
The batt cars are a pretty small part of the sail costs. Only $30 more than the regular cars (at my wholesale prices), so thats only $60or $90 total of what will probably be $4500-$5000 when i'm done.
Also his full batten sail is brilliant to furl as it all lays nicely on the boom with minimal effort. So those are my thoughts.
Your ideas are MUCH appreciated as I'm going to live with this sail for quite a few years, I hope...

Bigger Roach = Bigger Sailor?

I thought the "batt cars" needed a special track. Maybe not?
Full batten mains hit our local little racing world somewhere in the early 80's. This allowed more roach, lots less flogging of cloth when luffing, and made good cloth last longer or allowed cheaper cloth in the first place.

I still remember crewing on a fractional Schumacher 28 foot design with a monster main and having to "pop" it around the backstay every time the boom changed sides. The owner was happy to have the latest go-fast item.

I later had the standard main recut for my Niagara 26 and the loft mgr at the local North loft advised going full length for the top two and lengthening the lower two. This did indeed get rid of 90% of the shake when luffing.

For the Olson, we went with this set-up for our new main, upon the advice of the loft mgr at UKSails NW. This way I do not need the Harken or StrongTrack system (for significant $) to help hoist or drop the main.

OTOH, I do know of *some* one design classes that specify huge roach mains with all full battens.
I guess I am just cautious about adding weight and complexity aloft for a dubious payback for most sailing conditions...

My opinions... deposit .01 please...

Loren in PDX
Olson 34 #28400 Fresh Air

Loren,

we have just ordered a new main from the local Quantum loft and he was quite adamant that we go with four full length battens on our older 35. We discussed the issue pro and con and he felt that for our usage (i.e. old folks who apparently can't keep the main from flogging! ) full length battens were the proper way to go. So, that's what we did!

Full-Batten Mainsails

I just received a new full-batten main from North Sails Oregon for our E34 and am very happy with it. It has North/Sailman adjustable batten boxes.

Your EY.org bio is blank... but...
do you perchance have the Portland area E-34 that Schooner Creek Boatworks did the new hull-to-deck joint project on?
Loren
(just curious...)

Mainsail...

Much of my decision was based on the new Harken AA car system. I always loved the harken system but hated the size and weight of it all(unless you had a big boat). The new system is good for up to 300ft2 mains. I checked with the Harken engineer and he said my main would be fine.

The AA system also has Plastic slider cars along with all the roller cars so I can use them down low between the battens where the loads are minimal. They only cost $11 each (hard to believe anything from Harken is that price) The track is amazingly small, about 3/4 inch wide and the whole length will weigh about 7.75 pounds.
Also the stack height will only be about 29", one of my other gripes with the old larger system was the furled height at the mast.

The entire system will cost a little less than $1400, maybe even less if i can call in some harken favors. Antal is heavier and more expensive and the plastic tracks weigh more with less performance.

Soooo, balancing that all out is what brought me to the current choices. What would anybody consider to be a disadvantage with the full battens??? (Ignore costs)

thanks for the inputs....

Full battens

As a frequent single hander who never raced, I considered full battens the way to go. In addition, I had the Harken bat car system installed some years ago for about $1800 on our E-38. If I were racing I probably would not want all that weight aloft, but for our type of sailing it made handling so easy that it would be hard to imagine not having it.

When I got a new main a couple of years ago I went with Pentex, 5 full battens, and kept the Harken system in place. I also went with the UK Lazy Cradle sytem (or whatever they call it - much the same as the Doyle Stack Pack). I could raise the main to within 6 inches of full hoist by hand with the traveller system. And having full battens was quite nice when I needed to motor for short periods into the wind without the main flogging.

As for dropping the main, before we had to pull down on it to get it down to reef to douse the sail. Now I could be at the helm with the tail of the halyard in one hand, turn into the wind, toss the halyard off the winch, and drop the sail all the way into the lazy cradle system in about 3 seconds. VERY nice while short handed.

Stbdtack said:

"Much of my decision was based on the new Harken AA car system. I always loved the harken system but hated the size and weight of it all(unless you had a big boat). The new system is good for up to 300ft2 mains. I checked with the Harken engineer and he said my main would be fine."



My new main from Quantum with the Roach maxed out was 378.44 ft2. Original size was 360.27 ft2. Given that size I would say unless your sailmaker is making you a significantly smaller main that the system you mentioned above would be a bit undersized. But I suppose the Harken engineer would know better. I went with 1 full length batten at the top and 3 mid length battens. The sail is a radial cut made from Dimension Polyant (laminate) CX7T (60%) and CX6T for the other 40%. It is loose footed. I have been extremely satisfied with the sail thus far. The boat points higher, is faster, and depowers much better. Unlike my old stretched out full battened North its shape actually responds to vang, cunningham, outhaul, and traveller settings. I have sailed it in as much as 33kts apparent with the second reef. The sailmaker and I went out last week because I had a question about the location of the reef cringles. We decided that they we installed a bit too far aft and they are going to move them fwd. The only other concern I have is that sometimes on a reach in heavy air the luff will chatter between the sail slides as if the halyard tension is not tight enough. Unfortunately the day I took out the sailmaker I could not get the sail to do it. The only bad thing about this sail is that it is a bit tougher to flake than the old soft dacron main. I am not a huge fan of the full length battens as I like to be able to control sail shape and specifically draft, which is very tough to do with the full length battens. The advantages of those battens has been discussed above, easier to flake and you can flog it more. For me these did not outweigh the desire for more accute shape contol, but this is just me and may not apply to you.

Loren

I sail E34 #274 "Chandelle" out of Olympia.

Hi Richard,
Now that I think about it, the Ericson 34 that I saw in Portland was Pink Panther.


Loren

Loren,

This is OT, but caused the E34 to need repairs to the hull to deck joint? I thought it was fairly bullet proof.

OT, redux

I never found out. The yard glassed over the whole joint, finished it out slick, and painted it to match the hull... the joint with the aluminum strip and rubber filler had just... dissappeared! The color on the stripe and Ericson emblem were maintained just like factory, as I recall.
Loren in PDX

Mains

Well,

The SF Doyle guys are top notch-and the material choice is excellent-you will be MUCH happier and faster than with dacron.

The full batten vs. 2+2 is a style question. Certainly to make either work well for single or shorthanded reefing, you must have either a bat car type system or the strong track (a great low cost option). As long as you have this, either of these setups will drop easily when you need it to. The full battens add weight and sacrifice a small amount of shape control, but provide for the absolute minimum flogging and last a long time. If you lose one, though-you have a problem until you get to port. With the 2+2, you can more easily carry spares (When really going offshore, I always take a stitch and sew the battens in).

The luff chattering problem is elusive, and has something to do with spacing between slides, and luff curve. If the sail is otherwise shaped well, one good solution is to have the loft make up a "leechline" for the luff-it works just like a leechline, but is run along the luff and can be snugged when the luff starts to chatter. Regarding placement of the reef grommets-if they are too far aft, the floppy ring solution should solve this. If not, you have a more serious problem.

2 cents for today!
Cheers!
S

Floppy ring needs to be just a touch longer for the reef point issue. For the chattering luff would adding more slides thereby decreasing the space between slides solve the problem?

I have a loose footed Doyle 2+2 and like it a lot. Single handed reefing from the cockpit is no problem. I have a line run through a clutch and deck organizer and shackle on the goose neck then tied to the tack. That allows me to haul down on the luff while paying out the the main halyard. Once the tack is down tight, I crank in the clew using a separate line run through the boom through a deck organizer and clutch to the genoa halyard winch.

main reefing...

Thats exactly my plan for the tack. I never had any great luck with single line reefing on other boats. Although with roller cars I may give it a try again. Either way I'll be happy not to have to go up on a wet pitching deck to fumble the reef grommet onto the hook.

Pictures?

Geoff - any chance you have a picture of your set up - sounds like you have a line running from the tack (at the first reef point ) and down to a deck organizer and to one of your cabin top clutches. So it's a two line system, one for the tack and one for the clew, which is the original reef system from Ericson. Did I visualize this right?