> I was thinking of splitting my battens down the middle and trapping
> the sail in between it. hum... use tape on both sides, stain it and
> noone would know the difference. :)

That should work well. In fact, with split battens of that type, as long as they clamped together well, I'd not be afraid of screwing them together. Would make playing with different cambers easier if you wanted to do that. You could even get really crazy with external battens and have tensioners on each side to optimize sail shape. You know, that could be a very interesting experiment.

> Sounds good, I'm going need to try several different configurations
> until I get it right anyway.

No such thing as right though. What works well under one condition will be lousy under another. Try going upwind with a genoa! :-) So you should end up with several different sets of sails for different weather and sailing conditions. Of course, some will work in just about anything. A jib, while not always the fastest, will move a boat regardless.

> Now if I could just come up with a cheap roller jibs, I thought
> about a fishing spool and an aluminum tube, with appropriate size
> line of course.

Marks idea sounds pretty good. So does yours. If you go cheap and low tech, as well rather low use, it isn't going to matter much that your rolling system wears out in a year or two or five. You might want to check on the link I've stuck below just to look at their pictures. Especially the one at the bottom of the page. Shows their kayak roller rig for their jib.

As for the leading and trailing edges, remember, I haven't done this yet myself. So I haven't done anything about it. Don't think I'll have to either. For my use, I'm not planning to go sailing in a hard blow, so I shouldn't have a ripping problem. The most I should encounter will be some stretching. If it's not bad, I'll live with it. If it wears out the sail quickly, I should be able to simply replace the plastic sail easily. Worse comes to worse, I'll either fold the edge over and tape it with the carpet tape, or use some non-elastic heming material taped to the edge. Come to think of it, high quality duct tape would probably fit the bill.