Bending canoe sail to spar...

[David Geiss]

Here's what I have:

Laser style marconi sail with ropebolt (actually it's fully battened and have some nice roach, approx 48 sq ft in total). Using on 17 canoe with human ballast(me and maybe a crew member time to time).

Putting in reef cringles and this will allow slab reefing (bring her down to about 35 sq ft). Loose footed boom, bamboo, and carbon fibre spar.
Whole rig will also rotate in the partners. I don't want to junk up the carbon spar with glue on luff track and there are already grommets along the luff.

I need to be able to haul up, let her down for slab reefing and also to douse in a jiffy.

So here's my question: to bend the luff to this spar (round and tapered), should I lace (back and forth pattern), use hoops or some form of roband?

I have an Opti sprit rig with luff laced to spar but that is permanent lacing (ie don't need to lower and I just store the sail on the spar all season).

On this rig, ease in hoisting/dousing, low maintenance and least possible sail chafe are what I am after. All advice welcome, including rants.


Best,
David

[johngsandusky]

So here's my question: to bend the luff to this spar (round and tapered), should I lace (back and forth pattern), use hoops or some form of roband?

Yes. I've had success with all three. I like the opti rig though, canoes are easily driven and tender. The sprit rig is a plus.

[Bobcat]

I use robands to hold the luff to the mast on my catboat. In fact, we just back from bending on the sail and I tied a bunch of robands today

[David Geiss]

May sound nutty, but has anyone played around with velcro backed webbing for use as robands?
Seems like it could function.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Velcro loses about half of its grip strength when wet, which might be a factor. The other major factor you have to deal with is that big-roach full battens tend to push the luff forward, sometimes a lot and if they're compression battens, maybe a whole lot. It wouldn't be unusual if you find yourself in a situation where the battens are trying to push the sail's luff around one side of the mast and several inches ahead of the mast at each batten pocket. Lacing (of any pattern) usually is not sufficient to prevent this. Robands at the end of each batten pocket will work somewhat better, but can still be problematic. There is a reason why most sails of this type use either a boltrope in a groove or batten cars, as they are about the only way to stop this scenario and maintain the designed entry angle along the sail's luff. The other thing you can do to help is to really taper the heck out of your battens - so that they will easily bend to the proper airfoil shape from wind pressure alone (soft forward end, max draft about 35% aft, draft depth of maybe 1' in 10' of chord) and require no compression/tension at all. They get tied into the pockets at the aft end simply to keep them from falling out. This will help limit how much they want to push forward.

[David Geiss]

Todd, gave some though to that and ultimately making new sail w/o full battens, set up for simple slab reefing with two rows of reef nettles.
Using the fully battened sails I have on hand just to get the mast and boom configured for this approx sq footage.
I thank you for the incisive comments. With the lacing and these fully battened sails, I imagine having the grommets at the fore ends of the batten pockets might reduce the tendency of the batten to migrate fore of the mast. I am guessing that downhaul tension will factor into this as well.
Like I said, the goal here is to end up with a more traditional sail perhaps with some vey modest roach supported by shorter battens. Ideas? Keep then coming ...as always you have my gratitude.

PS...yes the velcro idea less than stellar.....I just came up with a quick and dirty roband with webbing, heat knife, chopstick ends and of course sewing machine on hand......have some refinements but will post this week with an image or two.....