prety sure i would have some that length out of gastra sails,where abouts are you, i'm is south oz

Try CST (composite spar and tube) Kurnell Sydney.

Rule of thumb:

"Always keep the good battens out of trashed sails"
(especially big trashed sails)

I've recycled carbon tubes from NP mark IV sails and KA Stealths into Severne Gators and KA Koncepts and they work a treat.

Worth the effort, as battens hardly take up any storage room.

Jaime,
Sailing off the beach and sometimes in some pretty wicked shore break, I have successfully repaired several broken battens without any noticable loss of curve flex.

Get some batten joiners (those plastic bits that join the tube to the solid) and some solid fibreglass rod (the stuff that is at either end of the complete batten). Cut the conical end off the plastic joiner and then cut the solid rod to the length of the two joiners and then sleeve the break with the joiner and rod. Then get some light cloth, mix up some epoxy and wrap the break about 5cm either side of the break. I very rarely tidy up the broken ends of the carbon tube as they usually go back together nicely.

Also try to get the batten the same length of original otherwise you have to modify solid rod at leech end to get maximum tension.

You can get away with sleeving just one plastic joiner (without solid rod) half way either side of break but it's not that harder doing it with two.

Edit - thought a sketch would help

You will need to determine a) If they are carbon, quite possibly glass and b) if carbon what % they are, 30%, 60% and 100% are used and also if they are extruded vs laminated.
Stiffness will vary considerably and if you use the wrong one it will have an impact the performance of the sail.
Hopefully somebody at North can give you the material spec???

or perhaps a repair?

www.easycomposites.co.uk/

Hey AUS4. Thats a great site. Lots of carbon tube materials.

these guys got some

www.carbonfiber.com.au/category5_1.htm

OK maybe I am a shonky repairer - or in denial about the importance of tube - but does it really matter?

The whole reason tube is used for the rear section is it doesn't bend much.
But the front solid / tapered flat section does bend.

You could replace it with carbon tube of same dia and it will change the sail characteristics about one p00fteenth - not enough that any average sailor could notice it - surely?

If it is carbon and you replace with carbon - all good
If it is glass and you replace with carbon - it will be a smidge stiffer and the sail may have slightly more forward draft. No big deal.



Or like Sausage says, sleeve them. The tube bends sooo little that adding a sleeve and gluing them together will, again, be a p00fteenth of a millimetre change in curve.

Mark, I was thinking the same thing, so I leant on a piece and I can tell you that at 1.6m these tubes bend plenty. Nowhere near as much as a flat batten, but they're a long way from straight under compression. Given that, I would assume the actual curvature matters. These big formula sails have handling properties that border on mystical so I'm loth to mess with it too much. Even though I'm still trying to work my way up to average sailor level :)

AUS4, don't be sorry, that'll save me several hundred bucks!

And Rob11, P.C_Simpson, mr love - you were right, I was wr-wr-wro...possibly mistaken :)

Again, thanks for all the responses, with a bit of luck I'll have this sail back on the water soon.