Symmetrical Cruising Spinnaker Idea!?!

[Rabannah2014]

I bought a symmetric Spinnaker last summer and used it quite a bit. My wife and I sail engineless in the PNW and end up using no upon a lot in the summer. Our boat is a 29' cutter.

What I have is a Spinnaker with a 22' foot, and I'm currently using a 14'pole.

What I want to do is use the Spinnaker pole on the windward side, and pole out the leeward side with a snatch block on the main boom. The idea is to make a symmetric Spinnaker tend to itself better on downwind and broad reach courses. I think with the broad sheeting that the two pole will provide should keep the Spinnaker from deflating. If the wind moves much from dead astern I'll drop leeward sheet out of the main boom snatch block and fly the spinny normally.

Has anyone tried this?

Does it sound like it would work in theory?

Don't bother comment about switching to an asym. Just save it for another thread.

Thanks, Cody

[StuM]

Something like this:?

Outgrabber

[Rabannah2014]

Yes exactly!! I guess it's called an outgrabber. Thanks!

[Foolish]

One thing to remember, and a mistake that's often made, is that you should always have the luff of the spinnaker (the leading edge) perpendicular to the wind. So if you are sailing close to dead down wind, the spinnaker pole should be almost at your shrouds. If you have the pole set that far back, then you will have very little of the spinnaker on the leeward side of the forestay and thus available to your new outgrabber.

If you want to keep better control of the spinnaker, then a simple tweaker block on the widest part of the beam of the boat will be sufficient to keep it where you want it.

An interesting thing that you learn about using an autopilot is that if the boat starts to round up, then you absolutely want the spinnaker to collapse. This will allow the boat to round down again. If the spinnaker does not collapse then the boat will continue to round up and broach. (The spinnaker will overcome the rudder.)

[Rabannah2014]

Thanks for the reply, and good point about lack of outgrabber utility on a down wind course. I think I will try to rig an outgrabber type arrangement and start using it on reaches.

[Snowpetrel]

Originally Posted by Foolish

One thing to remember, and a mistake that's often made, is that you should always have the luff of the spinnaker (the leading edge) perpendicular to the wind. So if you are sailing close to dead down wind, the spinnaker pole should be almost at your shrouds. If you have the pole set that far back, then you will have very little of the spinnaker on the leeward side of the forestay and thus available to your new outgrabber.

If you want to keep better control of the spinnaker, then a simple tweaker block on the widest part of the beam of the boat will be sufficient to keep it where you want it.

An interesting thing that you learn about using an autopilot is that if the boat starts to round up, then you absolutely want the spinnaker to collapse. This will allow the boat to round down again. If the spinnaker does not collapse then the boat will continue to round up and broach. (The spinnaker will overcome the rudder.)

Interesting point foolish, I was always taught and have run the pole forward to about 45 degrees or so in stronger downwind conditions to get the COE fwd, stabilise the spinnaker and reduce the likleyhood of a round down and Chinese gybe.

It seems to me in this case an outgraber to the boom would also help reduce the danger of a windward roll and help to stabilise the top of the spinnaker?

[Foolish]

Interesting point foolish

When you're sailing a boat as twitchy as an Olson 30, with its extreme tendency to broach, you learn a lot of lessons like this. Lessons that might not be so apparent on a big heavy boat.

When singlehanding with an autopilot there is also a tendency to oversheet a spinnaker so that it doesn't collapse so often. But again this is the wrong thing to do because it will just cause the boat to round up and broach. It takes a bit of nerve at first, when watching the leading edge of the spinnaker fold in on itself, but you just have to be patient and watch the boat head down and the chute fill again. This is just the opposite of a crewed boat where the trimmer will trim the spinnaker sheet to stop it from folding over while the helmsman will steer down.

And like any other sail in high wind, you can use the sheet tweaker to open or close the top 1/3 of the spinnaker to dump wind in higher winds and gain better control.