Elastic as mainsail slide attachment

[djs]

I only became aware of this as a possibility a couple of days ago when I saw it on a friends catamaran. It was as standard with his elvestrom supplied main and low friction cars.

I’m about to put on a new main and have the rutgerson low friction batten cars and intermediate slides. On the old sail we moved from plastic slides to these rutgerson Jobbies and I attached them with tape sewn into a loop.

Using loops of elastic cord / bungee will obviously allow some stretch in the attachment and I can imagine that there are pros and cons for this. One pro being that if my sewing loops is not accurate I might have one slide that is at a different tension because of a shorter attachment. Cons being minuscule change of sail shape as wind pressure varies.

I’m going to ask my sailmaker the same question but thought I’d see what experience of this is out there in the CF world.

Sail is approx 40 sq metres, boat is an approx 19 tonne Hans Christian. Rig is proper cutter with high clewed Yankee and boomed staysail. New main is made from AP 510 fabric.

Thanks in advance for your experience and thoughts.

Dave
SV Grace of Longstone

[JPA Cate]

~540 sq. ft. mains'l.

We use nylon webbing and sew them on.

Ann

[ItDepends]

Another point against using bungee it that it has a pretty short service life, especially in the sun.

There is no reason your sewing of webbing loops should not be accurate.

[djs]

Good point about the longevity. I the tropics the sun is giving everything a hammering.

[QUOTE=ItDepends;3663593
There is no reason your sewing of webbing loops should not be accurate.[/QUOTE]

You are right. I need to more strict with myself 😀