I have struggled for a while with cam rotation on my single cam point-7. Anyways today I fiddled around on land to see if batten tension would make any difference. Which it didn't at least for the things I tried.

Finally I tried releasing downhaul about one inch and it worked it immediately rotated on first try. Does that make sense?

PS I set my extension about one inch less than spec and generally downhaul this sail until the second from top panel gets a divot as per the "cam won't rotate" picture. When I got the sail it had some markers on that panel but they fell off.



PPS I like how the sail pumps and rides. Just annoying to have to manually pop the cam after gybing

Sometimes they go a bit overboard with the space they give the cam in the pocket ( or alternatively, it's not the correct mast, or it's stretched) if the cam has space between it and the mast, or not quite enough tension then it will be reluctant to rotate. That's why backing the downhaul off makes it rotate again, the cam is on more of a loaded angle, and has the load on the mast again to rotate around. The actual fix would be to add spacers to bring the tension and contact with mast back to where it should be at the proper downhaul, because no one likes an under downhauled sail.


thats my (educated) guess on what's going on.

I yank hard with the back hand when flipping the sail to rotate stubborn cams. It's worth a try if you haven't. Works a treat for me. I also agree that an under down hauled sail feels yucky.

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Subsonic said..
Sometimes they go a bit overboard with the space they give the cam in the pocket ( or alternatively, it's not the correct mast, or it's stretched) if the cam has space between it and the mast, or not quite enough tension then it will be reluctant to rotate. That's why backing the downhaul off makes it rotate again, the cam is on more of a loaded angle, and has the load on the mast again to rotate around. The actual fix would be to add spacers to bring the tension and contact with mast back to where it should be at the proper downhaul, because no one likes an under downhauled sail.


thats my (educated) guess on what's going on.

Oh cool. I have spacers I will try that

I was a bit skeptical subsonic first I tried one of the large spacers without luck even with less downhaul, so I added a second large spacer, still no luck. So I started screwing around with the battens no luck either. However when I remove the two large and put in one small spacer it was immediately rotating with moderate downhaul. This was the 6.4. hopefully it works on the water

Check the back of the sail, if the sail is touching the back of the boom it can create resistance to the cam rotating as the batten has to bend into a wierd "S" pattern to allow the sail to rotate.

The bottom batten looks to be under tensioned too. FWIW

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thedoor said..
I was a bit skeptical subsonic first I tried one of the large spacers without luck even with less downhaul, so I added a second large spacer, still no luck. So I started screwing around with the battens no luck either. However when I remove the two large and put in one small spacer it was immediately rotating with moderate downhaul. This was the 6.4. hopefully it works on the water

Yeah, its a bit of finding the right tension. Too much tension isn't good either.

i had a foil sail do it to me, that's where the education came from. Hope it works out for you.

Thanks all and more update: it was much better on the water until the later part of the session, which incidently coincided with me adding more outhaul not cause I was OP more because I was underpowered and I was struggling to gain ground upwind. I wonder if that might relate to elmos comment about the clew touching the boom, although I don't think it was fully outhauled

Re bottom batten tension: I have been running it a bit low after an initial consult with semi-pro rider re the failure to rotate. This was pre spacer maybe can add more now