ABOUT JIB BATTENS
Article courtesy of Nigel Young from North Sails.
Dear Melges 24 Sailors,
I have been asked by the International class to write a few words on the current Jib batten situation. As most of you are aware the class has allowed jib battens for a trial period of time this year and so far all the results are very positive. The exact wording of the rules surrounding this trial can be found on within this web site so I will not go into too much detail in this area.
What I wanted to do was to let the sailors know exactly what the sailmakers have been up to. I look after the North Sails One Design business in the UK and work very closely with my American colleague Vince Brun in San Diego. What I wanted to do was to let the sailors know exactly what the sailmakers have been up to. I look after the North Sails One Design business in the UK and work very closely with my American colleague Vince Brun in San Diego. We at North sails have tried the jib battens since their introduction after the Worlds in France last year. After several different options were tried we have arrived at a standard product.
The battens we are fitting are vertical battens. The most effective way to fit battens to almost any sail is parallel to the water, unfortunately this is not practical in the case of the Melges 24 as the jib is rolled around the forestay for storage and when racing the battens cannot be fitted this way. They must sit on the sail parallel to the luff so that when the sail is rolled they sit on the roll without putting any strain on the surrounding parts of the sail.
What this means is that the battens have to quite long to be effective. You can see from the photo's that the length of the battens is approximately 750mm top, and 850mm middle and bottom, but even at this length the tip of the batten is only sitting approximately 300mm into the sail. Having said that the length of the battens is an important part of keeping the leach hook in check, by accident having the battens so long is also having a very positive effect on the overall stability of the leach.
The Jib design we are building at North Sails is the J-5. This has been our standard sail for the past two seasons and is a well proven design. The addition of battens in the leach would theoretically mean that we could reduce the hollow in the leach and add effective area to the back of the sail. In practice this has not been the case as the additional roach in the sail means that the leach comes into contact with the spreader when sheeted hard with a lot of backstay on. This has also been covered by an additional girth rule that will be added once the class decides whether to adopt the battens or not.
So what this means in reality is that our Melges 24 Jib design has remained constant even with the addition of battens. We have not changed sail size shape or leach hollow in any way. But the battens have really helped the sails and in no particular order please find a list of benefits that fitting battens has on a Melges 24 Jib.
1) The leach of the sail remains hook free.
2) The old style leach hook right behind the tape never appears.
3) The effective racing life of the sail is doubled if not trebled.
4) The sail is easier to trim in all conditions.
5) In a big breeze there is no leach flutter, the leach remains stable at all times.
6) The sail requires only half the leach line tension of a non-batten jib.
7) The battens can be retro fitted to old sails and give them a new lease of life.
As you can see from the above list there are many reasons why the batten jibs are good news for the class. The only down side is that the battens need to be removed to roll the sail once it has been removed from the boat. As you can imagine, rolling the sail from head to foot cannot be done with the battens in place. Here in the UK we are fitting Velcro pockets for the jib battens to make this whole procedure much quicker and simpler to use. There is a small cost implication but this is more than offset by the increase in sail life.
Having sailed in the Melges class since it's introduction to Europe in 1995 I have used one or two jibs by now!! The jib battens in my opinion are a great addition to the class rules and should be adopted as soon as is practical. I think even the very top sailors who tend to have brand new jibs for every major event will suddenly find they do not need to do this. It is a very rare situation for a sailmaker to be in, but the addition of jib battens really do make the sails last longer than any thing else we could do to this product.
I hope the above goes some way to explaining what we have been up to and I look forward to receiving your comments once you have tried your first batten jib! You will not be disappointed!
Nigel Young
North Sails One Design UK
nigel@od.northsails.com