Rigging a symetrical spinnaker on Leopard 44

[Chrisatlantic]

@capnbill…
One line on each clew led to blocks on either bow works ok when running almost dead down wind, but isn’t going to work well when on more of a reach. And even on a run, if it’s windy, you can expect the chute to be moving around a good bit.

Likewise, if you have a single line on either clew running to a block halfway or more aft on the rail, the chute will ride quite high and move side to side in any kind of breeze.

It really pays to have a tack line from each clew led down to a block on the respective bow, and a separate sheet from each clew led to a block half way out a little more aft along the rail. The Windward clew is trimmed with the tack line down to the Windward bow, the leeward clew is trimmed with its sheet to the block aft on the rail when reaching out, for running, with a combination of sheet and leeward tack line triangulating the location of the leeward clew which really steadys the sail.

Of course when you want to gybe, you just transition from trimming on one side of the boat to trimming on the other side of the boat.

While it may seem like using four lines instead of two makes things more complicated, it gives you a lot more control, and makes the sail much much more manageable as well, not to mention gbeing able to be trimmed more efficiently for a little higher performance.