delevi wrote:Many sailors and many things I read have all said the same thing about spinnaker sheets. Never trap a spinnaker sheet. You don't even tie a stop knot at the end of the sheet. A spinnaker can put a boat in an emergency situation in a hurry. The Mac, even more at risk I think. When you have to dump the sheet, you may really need to dump the sheet and you want nothing in the way of stopping it.
If I may say so, that was the other half of the reason for the snatch lead. One quick tug inboard and the sheet is free.
That said, you may consider this for your gybing: Get dead down wind and cut the working sheet loose fast! Be sure to quickly take the wraps off the winch and make sure the line doesn't bind in the car as it exits. Fast is key here. This will take the whole spinnaker forward of the headstay, clew and all. Immediately haul in the lazy sheet, now the new working sheet. If you time it right, you would have performed an outside gybe. The other type (inside gybe) makes you pull the sail around the forestay with all kinds of friction, wraping it and forcing it to unwrap, which is often unsuccessful and there you have yourself a mess. This is easier said than done, and I have had plenty of wraps myself, but I still run 2 sheets and attempt the gybe rather than snuffing the chute. One thing I learned about the sock is to always snuff on the same side of the forestay as where the chute was raised. If it is not on the same side as when you hoisted, whip the lines in front of the forestay to the other side. Otherwise, the whole deal gets caught and up at the forestaay's top coneection point. A common mistake I used to make until fairly recently is to just pull down on the sock lines without looking up. It is only when the pulling became difficutl that I would stop and look up to find a tangled mess.
Here I bow to greater experience. Are you using the cabin-top winches, led back to the genoa tracks? Or have you mounted winches on the coamings, back by the helm?
On whisker poles. I haven't heard of a whisker pole going to the spinnaker clew. If you connect to the tack instead and use a guy combined with tack line, you will have better results. The pole, guy and tack line allow you to pull the whole luff of the spinnaker to windward where it gets clean air. There it will be completely out of the shadow of the mainsal, no matter how deep off the wind you are. The clew will behave very well without any support other than the sheet and the sail will be powered up. By simply supporting the clew without the chute getting clean air, you may only have the illusion of it being full, while it is merely supported and not drawing much air.
Your post is the first time I've heard of the whisker pole going to anywhere
but the clew. The way I'd heard it and tried it, the whisker pole is guyed (with a fore-guy and a topping lift) to put the clew exactly where you want it, and it's clipped around the sheet rather than attached to the clew. If you get your best results in San Francisco Bay with the whisker pole on the tack, I can see if I'd benefit in our gentler winds in Annapolis. (It's axiomatic that the chute has to get clean air to power it.)
Thanks, Leon, from me for myself, and for those less-experienced sailors who also need your advice....
