Do you think you can roll the batten right up into the reef? That’d be a very neat trick.

That’s exactly how the adventure island sail rolls up!  That’s the magic of the round batten.  And best of all, all of the batten hardware is in the hobie catalog!

A lot of guys who try boomless get disappointed by sail shape or set, or what-have-you.

Agreed.  But I think that the symmetric nature of this sail (the top and bottom are in opposition and everything is sheeted from the plane of symmetry).  In a way, this sail looks more like the high, but short, footed jibs that lots of boats had before winches.  A lot of the pulling-from-the-bottom-corner- problems might go away.  But some new problems might arise.

I was told a story of racing a Farrier trimaran with a boomless main in a stiff breeze.  On a reach, there was this zone of death in which releasing the sheet first powered up the main, because it got so much more camber.  The problem could have been fixed if there had been a wider traveller, but that solution will not be available to you.

My Nacra 5.8 had that kind of boomless main—with the clew board/club with several sheeting points.  Hooking the mainsheet into the outer holes tightened the leech and put lots of camber in the sail.  Hooking the mainsheet in the inner ones flattened the sail and let the leech spill off.  On Kensho’s sail, the mainsheet is purely a camber mechanism, like on a jib, but without the twist control from sheeting position, because of the opposed nature of the top and bottom. Is this good or bad?  Dunnow.

One thing I do know is that you should be able to blow the sheet on just about any point of sail since there is no rigging interference when the ama is to windward.  Caveat emptor!

But I love how fast this rig should fall to the deck if things do start to hit the fan.

One thing I do know is that you should be able to blow the sheet on just about any point of sail since there is no rigging interference when the ama is to windward.  Caveat emptor!

But I love how fast this rig should fall to the deck if things do start to hit the fan.

Without the battens blowing the sheet would leave you with a horrid flapping mess high in the air, battens should help.

On one hand it seems like a risky proposition, on the other hand it looks really really nice, simple, symmetrical totally proalike.

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On one hand it seems like a risky proposition, on the other hand it looks really really nice, simple, symmetrical totally proalike.

This rig is coming along very well. If I recall, it is Greg (Trifoiler) Ketterman who we can thank for the general geeky coolness of Hobie products over the past several years. I think that if he were in charge of GM engineering we’d all be driving mag-lev cars by now.