We have a pretty ancient sail on our new to us boat, that we are trying to limp along. It's just back from the sail maker, after a repair to the fraying batten pocket, so we had the battens out. We put the battens back in and reinstalled the sail. Obvious explanation for wrinkles on either side of the battens is knackered sail, but I don't recall the wrinkles before we had the sail off, so feel like it could be a geometry problem. Any suggestions (there is one reef in). Thanks

They removed the batten pocket but did a crap job sewing it back on hence the puckers in the cloth

What model yacht is it?
How old is the sail?
The sail looks very knackered as you say but in the photo the fullness of the 2nd batten up from the boom ( so the one just under the 3rd reef) looks way too full. Realise you are probably reaching a bit as per the jib trim.
Do you have a photo of the sail with 1 reef in as per here, but all the sail height ?
Then another photo of the sail at full height no reef hard on the wind in 10-15kts?
Seems like the batten just above the boom in the photo needs to be tensioned a fair bit more. And the one 2nd above the boom in the photo tensioned a bit more.
But with a knackered sail making it flatter can be virtually impossible.

I'm with lydia on this one. Top batten looks pretty tight already but lower might be able to squeeze a little more if lucky. It's an old sail so any work on it is a bit like polishing a turd but there's a lot of small wrinkles on that pocket I'm betting weren't there before the sailmaker had a go at it.

There a few strange things about that sail, where reef points added later or was it not originally full battened.
Look at the second reef points
L

Thanks -it's a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 44i,2010. It was in charter with the Moorings in Thailand, and got new sails from the Rolly Tasker loft in Phuket in 2015, and it was for sale by late 2016 (Moorings usually sell at 6 yrs as it's that point they need to replace a lot, so they would have put on whatever was cheapest that would get them through). Came down to Aus May-July 2017. Got a new engine and sat in Sydney for a couple of years until it was sold. The rest of the boat has been heavily renovated, but we knew the sails would be ours to do (and clearly we have a bit to learn about sails before we replace). The battens are on in the 2018 sales video, and from what we know very unlikely that anyone would have added battens. Ronstan batten cars have gone on since. Full sail up today (5 knots and motor sailing.so batten wrinkles are a reef issue, now have clew wrinkles. We put the sail back on, so clearly have some learning to do on set up. Lydia what are you seeing that is odd on the second reef? Thanks everyone.

ah, different photo different issue. I was wondering if the way your reefing line is set up in the first photo created the wrinkles. it looks like the foot is stretched more than the rest of the sail, reefing line pulling back hard as well as down. In your second photo it looks better and all the battens have a similar curve. Leech looks a bit tight, loosen the leech line a little? may not do much, try to get the leech telltails streaming then flipping.

Select to expand quote

Kenyafrog said..
Thanks -it's a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 44i,2010. It was in charter with the Moorings in Thailand, and got new sails from the Rolly Tasker loft in Phuket in 2015, and it was for sale by late 2016 (Moorings usually sell at 6 yrs as it's that point they need to replace a lot, so they would have put on whatever was cheapest that would get them through). Came down to Aus May-July 2017. Got a new engine and sat in Sydney for a couple of years until it was sold. The rest of the boat has been heavily renovated, but we knew the sails would be ours to do (and clearly we have a bit to learn about sails before we replace). The battens are on in the 2018 sales video, and from what we know very unlikely that anyone would have added battens. Ronstan batten cars have gone on since. Full sail up today (5 knots and motor sailing.so batten wrinkles are a reef issue, now have clew wrinkles. We put the sail back on, so clearly have some learning to do on set up. Lydia what are you seeing that is odd on the second reef? Thanks everyone.

Look at the eyelets on the luff.
Best bet is that sail did not have full length battens but certainly had luff slides and more than seven.

Luff slides were changed out for Ronstan batten cars by previous owner. The battens were on the sails when it came down from Thailand from the pictures we have seen. Hopefully we'll get out next weekend, put the second reef back on and try and get the tensions better.

Increasing batten tension, if you can, will do a lot for the wrinkles around the batten pocket. If the sail has stretched too much and therefore the batten pockets are too short you may be able to buy different batten ends or just jury-rig an extension. I've done some horrible things with tape to extend windsurfer battens when another one has broken, but a lumpy batten pocket is better than a wrinkly sail.

In the second pic the top battens may have too much tension, therefore forcing too much curve into the head.

One way to extend the life of an old main is to upgrade your cunningham so that you can easily and quickly increase or decrease luff tension. That will compensate for the stretch of the aging cloth to a certain extent. Some old dacron mains can still get quite good shape IF you work really hard with traveller, mainsheet, vang and cunningham as the wind strength and direction changes.