If I these wrinkles are running at an approximately the same angle as
the angle from the clew to the head ... they are probably 'girts'
caused by the extreme outhaul tension.

If thats the case adding reinforcement patches to the clew area 'may'
help to spread out the 'forces'. Otherwise, you'll probably have to
lengthen the battens so that the leading edge 'end' is no longer in
the same 'line' that these 'girts' usually form.

When this happens, you might try increasing halyard tension of the
luff .... if your boat has a bit of weather helm pressure.

When you excessively tension o ne side of a sail, you usuallly have to
tension the 'other' side or such 'girts' will appear. So these
wrinkles may be nothing more and a sail with an aggressively stretched
foot and not enough stretch on the luff.

hope this helps.


In article , Roger Long
wrote:

I had my shelf foot main converted to a regular foot because the shelf
wasn't really doing anything and the sailmaker though we could take out a
bit of draft to reduce backwinding. The foot folds were unsightly and the
sail no longer responded to changes in outhaul tension.

I got the draft reduction but now I have a big wrinkle running just ahead of
the battens. The shape was great in that area previously and now it looks
terrible. Since all that was changed was the shape of the foot, it seem I
should be able to fix it by fiddling with the lengths of the seizings that
secure the slides.

I'll be talking to the sailmaker on Monday but I would appreciate any advice
that would help me sound a bit more knowledgeable about the problem.

--
Roger Long