Greatketch
My wife and I flew our cruising spinaker for the first time last weekend. All the
rigging was set up properly, (when we purchased the
boat, a 1980 Seidlemann 29.9) except there was no sock for the shute. We built one and it did make raising and lowering as well as deploying the sail much easier than expected. That's not the question.
All went beautifully in deploying, and we played aroun in 3 to 8
knot winds seeing how close to the
wind, (about 35 degrees) to downwind. It looked and performed smoothly. . . until we went to jibe. As the instructions said, we released the sheet allowing the sail to flow in front of the bow, and began to pull in on the previously lazy sheet. The sail came around smoothly, and the now lazy sheet promptly developed several feet of slack, dropped into the
water in front of the
boat which promptly ran over the sheet, (Note: clew of sail on the port,
current lazy sheet run from the block at the starbord stern. . . sheet slack and almost perpendicular to the line of the boat). Withe the speed of the boat and the angle of the
keel, the line easily rose to the surface between the
keel and the
rudder where it promptly lodged between the bottom of the boat and the
rudder. (By the grace of Neptune, and a feathering prop, it did not foul the screw.) We did withdraw the line by angleing the rudder to release the jambed line, but this ended our afternoon of spinaker experimentation.
So here is the question: How does one jibe the cruising spinaker WITHOUT producing slack in the sheet and running over it without having one of the (usually only 2) crew going forward to lay the line by hand over the
anchor pulpit. If anybody has run into this problem before, let me know (so I don't feel singularly dumb) and please include how you
solved this problem.
Thanks
Playseabeau