Help/advice with Spinnaker rigging, launching/retrieving and sailing..

[Michael Rogers]

Apropos my previous post, and with apologies for ongoing facetiousness - I can imagine how deadly serious trying to get spinnakers to work must be -, I have come up with a name for the phenomenon I described. Of course it's String Theory: a rope is either too short or too long, and either way it costs you. As far as quantum mechanics and relativity are concerned, it's quantum because you need to measure how much; it's (vaguely) mechanical - blocks, sheaves and such; and the extra expense is relative to the cost of having a boat in the first place. QED.

Everyone probably knows the definition of a wooden boat - a hole in the water, lined with planks (or marine ply?), into which the owner has to keep pouring money.

Michael

[Andy Dingle]

All this talk of extraneous bits of string reminded me of that old Monty Python sketch re 'Simpson's Individual Stringettes' with John Cleese speaking the part of Adrian Wapcaplett - who can sell anything... Remember it? You may if you were a schoolboy in the late 60's early 70's. No? Here is a link..

http://www.skeptictank.org/files/en001/monty16.htm



Anyway. Asymmetric Spinnakers. I've been playing and problem solving. I've managed to launch, sail and recover the black beast this past weekend with some limited success - there is a picture in the gallery of it in full flight (Rutland Water gathering).

I've taken a photograph of my set up with the launching 'hole' in the starboard side of my foredeck (BR20 Wood Epoxy). I imagined the principle would be to attach head, tack and clew, stuff the sail into the bag with a recovery rope attached to the tabs on the sail (another photo attached). I am using an adjustable tack, again photo attached.
The idea would be to launch the spinnaker, have an enjoyable sail then all could be recovered with one tug on the recovery line.

Not so. Easy enough to launch, downwind with the wind on the port quarter. The problem with recovery is the hole and bag are really too small for the spinnaker, also the dead eye to feed the recovery line through was screwed in directly below the hole with just a foot or so between them, consequently, when attempting to recover the spinnaker it fed back in by only a foot or so then stopped!. (Has to be said, a pretty poor design and clearly untried).
I resolved this by cutting out the foot of the bag and renoving the recovery line dead eye. I initially tried recovery by hauling in the line attached to the 'tabs' at the rear of the sail, this worked but bunched the sail so badly it was a struggle to get it all back through the hole. I've now dispensed with using these 'tabs' on the sail altogether and just fixed the recovery line to the clew (with the sheets). I can now haul it all in in a longer thinner 'sausage' which feeds in rapidly and smoothly, stuffing it in the space under the foredeck (the sheets are long enough to stay on either side of the boat).
Conversely launching is now pretty easy too, using the up haul to get the beast out of it's lair, then as the wind takes it, haul in the tack line and trim off with the sheets. Job's a good 'un!

I also learned the hard way that it can only be launched and recovered on port tack (obvious if you stop and think about it!). Also it is important to ensure that any parts of the sail or sheets do not protrude from the hole when stowed else they will foul the jib club boom

I'm pleased with my efforts so far. I was touching 6 knots this weekend in some pretty light winds so it has been worth the effort. I will now sail with the spinnaker ready to be deployed by my willing crew... and am now turning my attentions to rigging a furlable flying jib - or maybe something bigger ... Genoa!?


I hope this input will be useful to someone and I would be very interested to hear from anyone else who has the same launching/recovery system that I had installed by the yard, and what they have done to resolve the problems they would definitely have encountered?

[Graham W]

I think the launch hole in the foredeck is specific to wooden BR's - I've never seen one in a GRP version.

[Michael Rogers]

Thanks for the Monty Python link, Andy. I didn't know it. Great stuff!!

[Andy Dingle]

I have never seen another asymmetric spinnaker launching system like mine on any other Bayraider? Wood or GRP. I'd be interested to know if any one else has this? My BR is quite early, No.12, when the GRP option was just a gleam in Matt's eye, so maybe this is unique to me and Matt changed the design after mine. Anyway I seem to have got it sorted now and am pleased. It now works quite effectively and the spinnaker can reside quite happily, and out of the way, under the foredeck, so I think it is, after all, quite beneficial.

How do GRP Bayraiders launch their Spinnakers? Is it just from a bag in the cockpit? The only one I have seen is Peter Cockerton's and he has now rigged his, quite successfully, as a furling system.


Graham. I have seen in the library your input re a flying jib which I thought was very interesting and am keen to explore this further. I see you say your flying jib is 3 square metres? Is there any reasoning behind this size? I wonder if there is any reason why we couldn't increase the size? I realise then it would not, strictly speaking, be a flying jib.
I'm going to speak with my sail maker next week and want to give a faint impression that I know what I am talking about when I ask him to price me up a sail. The luff could be as much as 4 metres I reckon? Do you use a wire 'boltrope' - similar to the standard jib so the furlers would work easier?
I would lead the new jib sheets back to the rowlocks (a firm mounting point) then through a cam cleat.


Sorry for yet another stitherum!


Andy

[Graham W]

I have never seen another asymmetric spinnaker launching system like mine on any other Bayraider? Wood or GRP. I'd be interested to know if any one else has this? My BR is quite early, No.12, when the GRP option was just a gleam in Matt's eye, so maybe this is unique to me and Matt changed the design after mine. Anyway I seem to have got it sorted now and am pleased. It now works quite effectively and the spinnaker can reside quite happily, and out of the way, under the foredeck, so I think it is, after all, quite beneficial.

Here (below) is a picture of another BayRaider with the foredeck launch hole – Matt in France, sailing what I think must have been BR20 number 1.

How do GRP Bayraiders launch their Spinnakers? Is it just from a bag in the cockpit? The only one I have seen is Peter Cockerton's and he has now rigged his, quite successfully, as a furling system.

I launch my spinnaker from the bag, having made sure that when I have previously stowed it away, the belly of the sail goes in first so that the tack, clew and head are all at the top, ready to be attached to their lines.  I use detachable sheets (with a hook in the middle) so that I can set the sheets up outside of everything while still ashore, rather than clambering around on the foredeck with them already attached to the sail.  When I'm ready to hoist, out goes the spinnaker pole, the sheets are hooked to the clew, the head is hoisted up on the halyard and then the adjustable tack line is hauled in and tensioned.  Bringing the spinnaker in is the reverse of this process, using the lee sheet to haul the sail inboard.

Graham. I have seen in the library your input re a flying jib which I thought was very interesting and am keen to explore this further. I see you say your flying jib is 3 square metres? Is there any reasoning behind this size? I wonder if there is any reason why we couldn't increase the size? I realise then it would not, strictly speaking, be a flying jib.
I'm going to speak with my sail maker next week and want to give a faint impression that I know what I am talking about when I ask him to price me up a sail. The luff could be as much as 4 metres I reckon? Do you use a wire 'boltrope' - similar to the standard jib so the furlers would work easier?
I would lead the new jib sheets back to the rowlocks (a firm mounting point) then through a cam cleat.

My flying jib was designed by Matt based on the photo of the Drascombe below.  I haven't measured the thing but I'm sure he could supply you with its dimensions. The size is dictated by the fact that it is flown in addition to the jib, not instead of it.  There's a whole thread on the subject here http://www.swallowyachtsassociation.org/smf/index.php/topic,459.0.html

To keep the cost down, it has no luff wire and eyes in each corner, just like the spinnaker.  I reckon it adds up to a knot to my boat speed in light conditions and works from about 60 degrees apparent back to a broad reach.

Given the forces generated when sailing to windward, I don't think I would want anything much bigger flying from my spinnaker pole, even when braced with bowsprit shrouds as well as a bobstay.  But if you have a solid plank bowsprit, that's a different matter....

The only photos that I have of it in action are taken onboard, so don't really show it in its full glory.  Here (below) is the best of the bunch.

Sorry for yet another stitherum!

I had to look that one up!

[Andy Dingle]

Many thanks for your reply and advice Graham.

I hadn't considered the lateral forces that a larger flying jib would create I must admit, although I had been thinking of toying with a 'plank' bowsprit or even extending the club jib boom...

But as I'm keen on keeping things as simple as possible so I think I will stick to your (or Matt's?) original idea's. The combined forces of the standard jib with a flying jib should satisfy me, and of course I always have my new found faith in my asymmetric to fall back on!

And I think the flying jib looks pretty damn splendid too!

I'll speak to the sailmaker and show the pictures to him and see what he says, I'm actually taking my BR up to him as he is also measuring me up for a shiny new cover so we can measure up the new jib too.

Kind Regards

Andy

[Peter Cockerton]

Graham

Been reading your post on the "More BR20 Mods" where you detail the foredeck stiffener, the new Thwart, and the bringing of spinnaker lines back to the cockpit via the inside of the pole.

Having flown the spinnaker more this season and having problems with the continuous furler I installed (uneven furling when the wind gets up and the sail unfurling from the top down) I have been flying it with a loose tack and pulling it all back into the boat and stuffing it under the foredeck until I want to fly it again. As the halyard, tack and clew sheets are all still attached flying it again after is fairly straight forward.

The reason I'm raising this post is to ask how successful the foredeck stiffener has been as I want to route the loose tack line through the pole and also a tensioner line for the bobstay. I have followed the instructions on tensioning the bobstay in the manual however I still seem to be getting considerable bend in the pole when the spinnaker is really pulling and as such the pole bends up and the spinnaker leech tension slackens, so I'm thinking of putting in a couple of blocks in the bobstay and feeding the line back in to the cockpit via the inside of the pole. If you have found the stiffener worthwhile I will remove the cockpit foredeck infill and put in the triangle and feed the lines as you have done via the stiffener. As I said before I'm not sure what the effects of the slack leeward shroud are/is but the infill makes it difficult to access the storage area anyway so that shouldn't be too much of a loss and my lines would have a nice routing portal. Will attempt to make a thwart as you have described as well to provide a securing point for the lines and line tidy for other bits of string.

Peter Cockerton

[Graham W]

Hi Peter,

Modifications and improvements are a continuous process!  I am not convinced that the triangular foredeck stiffener makes much difference but I still use it as it helps keep stuff dry at the forward end of the space under the foredeck and as you mention, is also useful for keeping the spinnaker tack line under control.

I have now abandoned my spinnaker pole in favour of a long plank bowsprit and have also given up as too heavy and complicated the forward rowing bench with pegs.

The bending problem with your spinnaker pole may be because it is too long - I think standard yard-supplied poles are now shorter than the originals.  You don't say what wind strength you were using the spinnaker in but it is a large sail and if it is too windy, something may break!

When I was using my old spinnaker pole, I rigged a non-stretch Dyneema bobstay and, if conditions warranted, Dyneema side shrouds as well, to stop sideways bending.  This seemed to work fairly well and I only gave up on the pole because I was fed up with it intruding into the cockpit when not in use (which was most of the time). My adjustable tack line still comes into the cockpit through the now defunct spinnaker pole tube, guided by a wooden plug and deck bush at the forward end of the tube. As long as your bobstay is fairly tight and the line doesn't stretch, you shouldn't need to adjust it.

Slightly off topic but I agree about difficult access to the space under the foredeck.  I have kept the original full-sized plastic infill for when I need a double bed under the foredeck, which is not often. However, for everyday use I replace this with two pieces of ply - the forward one as a shelf and the stern one as my new lightweight forward rowing thwart.  For shape, imagine making the full-sized infill in ply, chopping it into three pieces and throwing the middle bit away.

[Peter Cockerton]

Graham

Thanks for the update, will mull over the stiffener and thwart with pegs but probably not bother following your feedback. The pole is quite long although I try not to extend it too far, the wind strength was probably no more than F3/4 and I'm sure the bobstay will benefit from initial pulling force with the aid of a block or two in the circuit. In my experience you can't get a downward bend in the pole before flying the spinnaker just by extending the pole with as much pull as you can muster on the pole extending rig line and as such the bobstay will stretch and the pole flex upward with the spinnaker flying. Anyway will implement and give feedback when I try it soon.

Your initial reasons for the stiffener to reduce the foredeck flexing which would allow the tabernacle to sink on the leeward side and as such tilt the mast to leeward slightly does still make sense if indeed that area of the foredeck is flexing. The leeward shroud would look slacker as a result. My mast I reckon is probably the heaviest ever fitted to a Bayraider 20 being single piece, hollow wood construction for a Bermudan style main and it has been commented on before about how much slack my leeward shroud shows when close hauled. Difficult to know what tension to have on the shrouds when just the mast is up, I have been caught before by having over tight shrouds in as much that the mast does not go far enough forward resulting in the back of the club boom being too close to the foredeck ( the triangle of the jib leans to far back), So in one way I was hoping for positive news on the stiffener from you, but in another it suggests perhaps that we don't have a problem to fix and I just need to put a little more tension on the stays. I suppose I could put a straight edge across the same points as you have rested your stiffener and take a measurement from that up to the foredeck under the tabernacle with the mast not raised, then with it raised, then with the boat close hauled (get trusty helm Andy D on the case) just to see if the distance reduces significantly. What do you reckon, surely I can't be more than a few mill so may be hard to measure.

Peter

[Graham W]

I forgot to say - I mostly use a conventional jib instead of the self tacker these days, which is another reason for having a bowsprit.  One result is that my lee shroud is much less slack, which makes me think that bending in the jib boom rather than foredeck flexing could be a cause of lee shroud slackness. Let us know if you find any foredeck flexing - as you say, it may be difficult to measure.

[Guy Rossey]

I have installed a code zero on a furler on my BR20 after having changed the spinnaker pole for a more rigid aluminum one. It really works well and it is very handy singlehanded ! Also, I then somehow feel a  better equilibrium when sailing.

_____________________
Catchando Bay (BR20 #48)

[Graham W]

Guy,

Interesting - and good looking.  Who designed the code 0 and what furling or reefing gear are you using? And how have you arranged the blocks at the top of the mast? Are the sheets led back to aft oarlock bases, as with the asymmetric spinnaker, or further back to the aft horn cleat?

Sorry for all the questions but this arrangement could suit my long plank bowsprit nicely and would be great for light wind sailing during Ionian mornings.

[Guy Rossey]

Graham,
here some pictures and info :

- the furler is a Hookmatic, very well built and at a good price ( 363,-€ ) : http://www.minicroiseur.fr/boutique_produit.php?id=3792

- for the blocks at the top of the mast, please see the picture. I have fixed the block of the code zero on a triangular deflector (?) which I bent to fit correctly on the top of the mast.

- the sail was made locally by Vegavoiles ( close to 500,- €) :
http://www.vegavoiles.com/voilerie/coloriez-votre-voile.html

- and the sheets are led further back to the aft horn cleat since this code zero has a large overlap when sailing with crosswind or even more pinched. 

Good luck!

____________________
Catchando Bay (BR20 #48)

[Graham W]

Thanks Guy. More questions I'm afraid. Was your masthead fitting one of these (before you bent it to shape)?  http://www.purplemarine.com/dinghy/rwo-spinnaker-halyard-crane.html  And how did you secure the middle leg to the back of the mast?