Rock and Roll Slides
If you know anything about multihulls, they will not stay head on to the wind. So the slides on the baton cars get jammed sideways as the mainsail force drives forward. Most times I can drop the mainail down a bit and then pull again on the halyard to pull it up some more. This can be frustrating as the jam likes to occur maybe on the last foot up. Look up the mast and the baton cap slides are like sideways. More than once I reefed, got under way, then when things were stable, get the boat in irons, shake the reef and pull the mainsail all the way up. Not pretty, but got me going at the time.
I read some articles where a potential solution was to add on a special slick track that fits the mast slot and then different sail slides for that new track. Nope, not going there. Now for another improvement idea, for the new Bainbridge baton cap, I read about slides with wheels to roll on the back side of the mast to keep the slide straight in the mast slot. From one of the European sailing articles, I saw this advert from Horizon Sails that featured these Rutgerson model 1525-11 pressure absorbing slides with rollers (h-sails.com/en/home/68-universal-pressure-absorbing-roller-slide.html). Horizon Sails fabricates all manor of custom sails for high end cruisers and competitive sailors. I searched their site, from the from the various slide models and physical specs, then remeasured my mast slot for fitment. I found that Rutgerson fabricates all sorts of sail hardware, just could not find a on-line dealer in the US. The only US dealer is Challenge Sailcloth, but without an on-line store. They have state of the art sail material, R&D, and very high end sail products; like fabricating the Marblehead sails on the Maltise Falcon for example (https://www.symaltesefalcon.com). On-line searches for web-sales dealers pointed to Europe, Australia and New Zealand. However the Challenge Sailcloth hardware manual, ISSUU published and not downloadable, is rich with information about sail design, fabrication, hardware choices, even good explanation of my problem with the baton cap sail slide webbing attachment binding in the mast slot. Then with the help of PayPal, I placed an expensive international order for five rock and roller slides that were shipped from just outside Warsau Poland. The look like little skateboards with a keel, hahaha.
I got a sewing awl kit from SailRite. Have had the need for this and previously did work around repairs. Did remove the Bainbridge slides on the baton caps and re-stitched the webbing to the Rutgerson roller slides. Certainly less expensive than replacing the baton caps for the baton cars, with swivel hardware to the roller slides. Masthead previously used a finer whipping thread to sew the slide attachment webbing. So my mod does not look quite as pretty. But it pretty well works.
So I went out to Ft. Desoto for a few days to sail with Ricky and friends. Once I got the main, with the new slides, fitted in to mast, the sail when up and down very well. The remaining problem area is the mast gate. I had fabricated mast gate plates, but did not have time to re-fabricate the starboard side gate part. I did replace the port side plate screws with aluminum rivets to permit the roller slides to roll over. More on that later.
