Sailing without battens

i would expect that the battens would be needed by the sail design and would probably prolong the life of the sail too.  I doubt that it is a good idea but why not try it and answer your own question.

Like JimC I would say that it would make it more difficult to sail. If your talking about the 4K the easiest way  to make it more manageable is actually to sail it full on. This might sound funny but if you do it does make it easier to sail.

Landing...
My favorite technique for coming onto any kind of lee shore is hove to with the jib firmly backed. Foils most of the way up and she'll slip in sideways with no bother. Daggerboard rudder does help enormously though. Try it out on the water to get an idea of the angle of drift.

How embarrassing is this - We sailed out of WPNSA. Do
slips get any bigger?

Our usual launch routine is for me to hold the boat flat
while the crew climbs aboard. I then grab the tiller and
main sheet, throw a leg over the side and push off which
has never been a problem in the Vago. In the 4K we
launched of the North slip into the wind. Before I had
chance to climb in the jib pulled the bow around and
raced off along the slip with me running after it. I just
managed to stop it running aground.

Second attempt was a bit more successful and we got
going.

Because I didn't fancy landing straight downwind I came
in on the east facing slip on a beam reach. All was good
until my crew lifted out the daggerboard. At the point we
shot off sideways towards the rocks and I had to crash
capsize to avoid an impact. My crew had already jumped
out into 7' of water to try and catch the boat. That
hadn't worked either!

In hindsight I think I should have launched and landed of
the east slip and perhaps sailed past it for the landing
returning to it on a close haul. At least that way we
would have drifted onto the slip once the plate was
lifted. I also think we need to look at how much plate we
can leave down without it hitting the bottom. I might
also experiment with dropping the main and coming in on
the jib but we never managed it in the Vago through lack
of space and I can't see the 4K being much better.

Come the next season we'll be sailing out of Castle Cove
again. It tends to be more sheltered there but also a lot
shallow for a lot longer.

It's far less stressful in a plastic boat you know!

for lee shores, as long as you've got enough space, being able to drop the main into the boat and sail in under jib alone is a perfectly valid technique- we use it a lot in the b14.