Where to get sail battens??

[Tyvealive]

Hey, I'm just wondering if there's anywhere in Comox/Courtenay to get battens for an old sail? I need one that's about 6ft long to replace a broken one.
Cheers,
Ty

[tbrown]

AFAIK, the answer is "nowhere nearby". You can order batten stock from places like sailworks.com ... but if you're a little more verbose in your description of what you need, I'm pretty sure you'll find there are folks here that can supply what you need from scavenged battens out of old sails. It gets a little trickier if you have a BIG old sail... and obviously you want to make the best match you can (different stock has different stiffnesses) ... if it is just a tip busted in a camber inducer there may even be enough travel in the tensioner that you can just sand the tip clean and continue using it. in my experience, most big battens are multi part (tip, tube, and a little bit of rod that leads to the tensioner). If you've got one of those, the simplest thing (assuming you can get it apart) is to cut out the broken part and replace the short rod with one which is longer by the amount you had to cut out. But get a micrometer out and measure what you've got, maybe take a few pics. Aside from the materials, there isn't much high tech about battens.

I took some pictures the first time I went down that path. -Tom

[nanmoo]

You can find these at sailmaker shops sometimes, especially ones that deal with the performance dinghies.

BUT- your better solution is to harvest one from any old sail (just not too old). They are pretty standard, just a tube of carbon/glass with a flared end that plugs into the luff. The only piece that is more proprietary is the end cap tensioner that you use to tighten them which generally just slips over the batten tube so as long as the batten diameter is the same you are golden. Last year I seemed to break one every trip to the coast, at one point I was harvesting a batten from my 4.3 to use in my 5.2 and swapping it back and forth, and then eventually I nabbed one from some late 90's Ezzy that I continue to use to this day.