I have been considering the batten pockets on my planned sail.  For various reasons, (not in the least that they are free and readily-available) I am planning to use bamboo battens myself.  Unlike aluminium, they do not come in standard sizes nor are they  perfectly straight and they tend to be tapered.  That being so, batten pockets would have to be a pretty loose fit, which would mean some would fit better than others.

On Badger, instead of sewing pockets, we used about half a dozen straps, which made it a lot easier to change the batten at sea (you just had to locate each strap, poke the batten through, tie it at one end and then hoist sail up far enough to tie the other end.  Much easier than trying to stretch the whole, reefed sail out.)  I was wondering whether to extrapolate this concept: make the straps each, say 50mm wide and then line them with Velcro.  This way each strap could be held snugly around the varying widths of the bamboos.  It is quite difficult to force Velcro apart - it really works by pulling one end and 'ripping' it open; if it did tend to open, a couple of stitches taken on either side would suffice.

I'd be interested in comments.  Am I worrying too much about the bamboos being a loose fit in the batten pockets?

Gary Pick wrote:

First sail after fitting the batten pockets has been very positive. I had to adjust the position of the sling point forward a few inches to get rid of the diagonal creases. I engaged the outboard in a couple of tacks but that could have been due to light wind and tide effect, other than that Redwing performed very well. Looking forward to the next sail.

First sail after fitting the batten pockets has been very positive. I had to adjust the position of the sling point forward a few inches to get rid of the diagonal creases. I engaged the outboard in a couple of tacks but that could have been due to light wind and tide effect, other than that Redwing performed very well. Looking forward to the next sail.

After much struggle I've come to the conclusion V90 thread is a bit overkill for my poor Husqvarna. Anyway apart from the loops for the ties the sail cover is done. I bought a sewing awl a while back so maybe I'll use it to sew the loops for the ties on...a nice meditaion. :)

I used webbing batten parrels on Footprints with great success. I used 50mm wide webbing which was pulled quite tight. As of when I sold Footprints these parrels had done 7 years of service, many miles, coastal and ocean, and with no problems at all. I sewed loops in the ends of the webbing, one loop secured to the forward end of the batten, the other end of the webbing attached to the batten with a light lashing which passed around the batten and was prevented from moving forward with two plastic 'pegs' screwed to the batten wall. There is a photo on my profile photo album, new sail. It should be noted that Footprints had very long batten parrels to allow for moving the sail fore and aft on the mast.

I should be able to copy that photo here?