Today’s objective was to go sailing and have Arthur drill me on reefing; a method of reducing the area of sail to keep the boat stable in changing/uncertain conditions and strong winds. We spent the first 20 minutes setting the yacht up after all the work that’s been carried out over the winter.
With the running rigging reset we hoisted the mainsail and discovered a problem. No battens. When the sails were taken off for cleaning and stitch-checking, the battens were (quite properly) removed. Unfortunately they hadn’t been replaced. The battens are long slivers of rigid fibreglass that fit snugly inside tightly-stitched ‘pockets’ which run the length of the mainsail. So Arthur and I started to refit them and that’s when we hit another problem. Each batten has soft plastic ends which slip onto the fibreglass and prevent the battens from working their way through the pockets and damaging the sails. When we started to refit the battens we discovered that the ends were still in the pockets. And this meant that we couldn’t refit the battens.
So sailing didn’t happen, but we drilled reefing whilst moored up in the marina. It was a theoretical exercise, but at least we achieved something.
I called the sailmaker who said he’d pop around in the week to sort out the battens issues.
Here’s what battens (with ends) look like:
