| Do old fiberfoam battens easily break ? #216442 07/25/10 03:15 PM 07/25/10 03:15 PM |
Joined: Feb 2009 Posts: 43 where the wind never blows Lockenfisch OP
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OP
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Posts: 43 where the wind never blows | Hi everybody, today on my inter 18 we broke from the top down 6 - in words six - of the main fiberfoam battens and I don't know why. The battens are 11 years old and the situation was: dreaming helmsman gibed, boom kicked cap and glasses off his head, dude almost blind tried to see where the sh*t was, big bad puff meanwhile threw boat down. O.K. up to here nothing special. But after righting the boat and starting sailing again we saw the six broken battens and were totally clueless how that happenend. The capsize was really slow cause we were like stopping action in the gybe to see were my items are and nobody fell into the sail. What do you think is it the age of the batten foam? I found some pieces of it in the batten bags looking like litte black stones and: almost as hard as stone. For example the top batten which is very short and standing like 45° up from my opinion never has to carry heavy load or pressure and it broke... I just don't understand it. Hm. Thanks for your comments. | | | Re: Do old fiberfoam battens easily break ?
[Re: Lockenfisch]
#216444 07/25/10 04:06 PM 07/25/10 04:06 PM |
Joined: Sep 2007 Posts: 571 Hamburg Smiths_Cat
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addict
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Posts: 571 Hamburg | You should also replace the helmsman. All plastics are weaken by UV light, most plastics suffer from fatigue, so yes, sail battens can be too old, not only fiberfoams. However a bad gybe in high winds can also ruin your battens (e.g. if the sail crashes in the shrouds. Cheers, Klaus | | | Re: Do old fiberfoam battens easily break ?
[Re: Lockenfisch]
#216447 07/25/10 05:00 PM 07/25/10 05:00 PM |
Joined: Jun 2001 Posts: 12,310 South Carolina Jake
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 12,310 South Carolina | I've broken battens before in a capsize if the wind tries to flip the sail up around the mast while the boat is on it's side.
Jake Kohl | | | Re: Do old fiberfoam battens easily break ?
[Re: HMurphey]
#216521 07/27/10 07:29 AM 07/27/10 07:29 AM |
Joined: Sep 2007 Posts: 757 japan erice
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 757 japan | i find it not so hard to repair the 29year old oem foam battens in my nacra 5.2 sail when i bust them
something like a 5inch strip of 300gm cross weave glass wetted out onto the sanded batten, then a 3.5inch strip, then a 2.5inch strip
let set and trim edges
beats trying to order them from over seas anyway
eric e 1982 nacra 5.2 - 2158 2009 weta tri - 294
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