Rigging a spinnaker

[mikedefieslife]

How do you guys rig your symmetric spinnakers on your cats?

Using the beam do you do away with the pole and guys and just have two lines port and starboard running to blocks at the stern and then back up to your main winches?

Pretty much everything I’ve seen tends to cover either monos or asymmetrics.

Curious as I had mine out the other day. With only a 4.5m beam though I’m more like a large momo than a cat.

[mark_morwood]

We had an asymmetric so it was a little different, but with symmetric, I have always seen them still rigged with guys as well as sheets. The guys go down to the respective bows and back to the cockpit. You'd usually be sailing it with load on the windward guy and the leeward sheet. Many variants on running the lines depending on what blocks and winches you have available.

There seem to be lots of videos online for rigging a parasailor on a catamaran that show it in action. The parasailor is just a fancy symmetric spinnaker with a window in it.

[mikereed100]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

Using the beam do you do away with the pole and guys and just have two lines port and starboard running to blocks at the stern and then back up to your main winches?
.

Pretty much the way we do it, although we run the sheets to the front of the cabin, not the stern, as we have a forward cockpit where sail handling is done. In addition, we have fore-guys run to blocks at the ends of the forward cross beam. The sheets and the for-guys are actually just one line with an alpine hitch in the middle to which we attach the spinnaker clews with a soft shackle. We leave the sheets up and run through the blocks and jammers so that, in order to fly the spinnaker, we just tie on the halyard and sheets and hoist it up in it's sock.

[captainfitzwine]

On my Lagoon 450 I run my symmetrical spinnaker with two sheets on each side, one controls up and the other out (sideways). This allows flexibility enough to even fly the spinnaker as asymmetric when needed. The sheets split and route differently through blocks. The up sheet through the bow block up through a mast base block to the helm and the out sheet to a mid-cleat block to a stern block back up to the helm. I have complete control at the helm

[UNCIVILIZED]

A safety tip on this for those that don't know. But never, ever, put stopper knots in the ends of any lines connected to a spinnaker. As at some point you'll need to let one line, or several, attached to it run. And if you have stopper knots in the sheets, halyard, guys, etc. It can cause big, big trouble.

[mikedefieslife]

Based on the way people rig, it looks like you'd have to let two lines go to depower it.

My thoughts are to attach a dingle line each side using an alpine butterfly knot to double them up. One running forward and one rear either side. As others have mentioned, that allows better control of height and angle, though to adjust either it means adjust both lines, as for example you pull the spinnaker further to the side without the height being adjusted, hence needing tighten the one sheet and ease up on the other.

All sounds simple in my head.

[mikereed100]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

All sounds simple in my head.

And in mine as well, but then I am simple minded. One of the nice things about a cat is that it is so easy to fly a spinnaker that you end up doing it often. We probably use our spinnaker as much as the main.