Is it Worth Adding a Pole to an A-Kite ?

[Motley]

We ran two headsails for a while by hanging the genoa off the pole and the asymetric off the boom! It worked well; of course we rolled like a puppy on a damp lawn, but we made good time.

What's an ATN Tacker?

Motley.

[nelson.peter]

An ATN Tacker is a fiberglass bracket that slips around the furled head sail and has hardware for attaching the tack of the kite too. It is made by a French (?) company, ATN, and is available worldwide. Sailrite in the USA carries them. It shortens the luff on our kite by raising the tack above the deck. But it gets it all up above the anchor, bow pulpit, etc.

But for the crossing, I am going to lose it and just tack the sail to the bow roller. That should allow the sail to rotate to weather more. We did this on the crossing last year and it worked fine. We'll see again!

[Motley]

I just had a simple wire strop to raise the tack on the asymetric.

[roverhi]

Here is the website for the ATN Tacker: ATN Tacker

ATN is an Americanization of the first name of the owner of the company, Etienne Giroire. He's a US citizen of French Extraction. He has a number of innovative sailing and boat related products that really work like the Top Climber and Spinnaker Sock to name a few. He's really creative guy.

[J C]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

I think that you need to think long and hard about why you are doing the ARC. If you treat it like a race, you will want the pole, and you will probably break a lot of gear. If you treat it like an Atlantic crossing with parties, you will also need the pole, but not the spinnaker.

Going from the Canaries to St Lucia, the wind will be pretty much dead aft, along with the seas. It won't be a constant wind; there will be lighter moments with 12 knots, days of 20 knots, and squalls of 35 knots. There will also be days of cross seas which will roll the boat.

The best rig for the crossing is twin genoas on the same furler, with a pole on one side. If you drop the main and deploy the twin jibs, you can go dead down wind and up to 20 degrees on each side (pole on windward jib), with no danger of knockdowns or accidental gybes. The steering is much more stable with the center of effort forward, and you can line up with the swell, and the rolling is much reduced.. The best is yet to come, twin 135% genoas have a lot of sail area, but are far more easily managed. When a squall hits you simply ease both sheets and partially furl the genoas--a one or two person job instead of all hands on deck. This is a lot like the twizzle rig, but with fewer complications and the same performance.

If you want the thrill of pushing the boat as hard as possible, being called up at 0300 to douse a raging spinnaker in a squall, multiple roundups/downs, and seasick and exhausted crew, go with the spinnaker and the pole.

If you want an easy passage, the boat and crew in one piece, and a finish within 24 hours of the spinnaker option, bring your old genoa and go with the twin jib rig.

I've done it both ways.

Don

Thanks for your comment on flying two genoas off a single twin-groove furler, with a pole to windward. I have thought for a while that this makes sense for the reasons you have given, but I have seen little reference to this as most people seem to either fly a smaller solent jib on a separate furler, fly a second genoa with a free luff or even stitch the 2 sails together and use a single luff groove.

Could you explain in more detail how you attached the head of the second genoa? Did you have to lower the 'main' genoa in order to fix the head of the second genoa to the top swivel and then hoist them both together? Or, did you consider hoisting the second genoa on a thin spectra 'halyard' to the top swivel? (I think the spectra halyard could be made off to the bottom swivel/drum so that it does not foul when furled.) Could the second genoa be made from heavy spinaker nylon in order to save weight, stowage space and cost, as it would not have to cope with the high loads imposed on a normal genoa when sailing upwind? It would seem to me to be much more useful if the second genoa could be hoisted and recovered without having to lower completely the main genoa.

Do you have any ideas on this approach?

Regards
JC

[donradcliffe]

To fly two genoas on a twin groove roller furler, we hoisted both up together using the same top shackle. We used lashing on one sail at the bottom to compensate for a difference in luff length. We attached one sheet to each genoa.

When going downwind, we used a spinnaker pole on the windward side--we could sail up to about 140 degrees apparent on the pole side, and about 170 on the non-pole side.

When reaching, we had to deal with the fact that one of the genoas was high-clewed, and one was not, so we used both sheets--the leeward sail was sheeted to the primary winch and the windward to the secondary. This was only an issue for the first day out of the Canaries.

The ability to drop or furl one of the sails independently would be useful if you expected winds from a variety of directions, but we went with the simple solution and had no problems--furling went better than expected, even in squalls up to 35 knots. There were never any problems with wraps or tangles that you get from a loose luffed sail, and we never had to worry about a gybe. The only problem we had was chafe where the genoa sheet went through the end of the pole, which we minimized by duct taping the sheet every day.