I like your stories and please keep them coming. The spinnaker is both a blessing and a curse to have aboard. I am often sailing solo and have been studying ways to fly the chute. I've come across a system that makes the spinnaker more manageable.
http://www.trailersailor.com/content/reviews/read.cgi?2

But being the spendthrift that I am, I improvised.

I have a furling jib which I think is most helpful for this set-up. Simply place a strap or a piece of rope through the tack of the spinnaker, and wrap it very loosely around the furled jib. This loop is resting on TOP of the furled jibsheets thus preventing it from falling into my line of vision.

For the downhaul, I run it from the tack of the spinnaker down to the deck through a block attached to the front hole of the deckplate. (The wire in my jib doubles as my forestay hence if I take the jib Down, the mast comes with it)

The downhaul is then run from the block back through small fairleads placed so that the line doesn't chafe against the splashboard as it takes a 90 degree dive down towards the ring for the hiking straps. A small block is placed on this ring and the downhaul is then lead back to a clam cleat that is placed on the centreboard housing just aft of the center seat. (I use a cleat that has a solid piece above the teeth. This prevents the downhaul from going astray in the cockpit.) The spinnaker halyard is also lead aft towards the cockpit.

The spinnaker sheets are threaded back towards the spinnaker blocks. I have also placed jam cleats just forward of the spinnaker blocks. The spinnaker is now sailed as a gennaker, or in other words a really big jib. The best part of this system is there is no need for a spinnaker pole (boom).

With a bit of practice the system will work and if you wish I can provide you with the part numbers of my gear.

Long may your big jib draw !!!!

Robert
Celtic Kiss #2120

posted August 16, 2002 04:01 PM            

Enjoyed the bits about encouraging new sailors. I've done a lot of that in my 22-year-old boat, too. But the most memorable time was the sailors I did NOT manage to convert...

My wife's brother, his wife and their two children were visiting us in central Wisconsin, from Michigan. Since they were only with us for a couple of days in the summer from a few hundred miles away, we didn't have a pick of the best days to sail. It was either Day One, with no wind at all (which we didn't pick) or Day Two, with a steady 25-knot westerly ripping across the lake and producing great high whitecaps. So that was the day we sailed.

My kids, pre-teens, were used to sailing with me by that time, and used to fairly windy and wet conditions, as I used to single-hand a lot in high winds, and then started taking them with me as soon as I could trust them not to jump or fall out of the boat at the worst times. Their cousins took a cue from that and decided that it might not be fatal to go out with Uncle Chris on this windy day, and Uncle Jimmy went along for the ride.

Uncle Jimmy tried to be cool, though his experience was in much larger and heavier power boats, and he did not like being so close to the water. He wasn't so sure about this 'cloth-powered' thing. His kids were kind of white-knuckled as we started to beat upwind. And boy, did we ever beat! The boat took a pounding like it hadn't in years, but I was confident in her ability to hold up, and my own ability to keep her upright. Even so, I had decided to beat upwind in case conditions got worse; I didn't want to be in a position of having to land downwind and walk everyone home if I couldn't handle the conditions.

So we tacked several times heading upwind across the lake (several miles wide at that point) until we were about a mile and a half offshore. Uncle Jimmy and his kids were not all that keen on tacking, with sails flapping and boat heeling from one side to the other, but my kids and I managed to convince them that this was normal and well. Then all of a sudden ... CRACK!! BOOM!!! and we were making leeway like crazy.

I thought we had somehow hit bottom, but I have since realized that it was just the combination of an old and weatherbeaten wooden centerboard and the extreme conditions that day. The board had simply broken below the waterline. The BOOM was the board trying to float below the hull and meeting it as the hull came down off a wave. I watched it float away in the sunshine as I smiled to the crew and tried to allay their fears.

"Let's head back now!" I suggested, to complete agreement. My kids were unfazed, as if "oh, you know Dad ... the boat's upright and we're all in it, so what could be wrong?" but the young cousins were hanging onto the boat like grim death. Jimmy was wondering how long everyone could float until the rescuers got to us.

We didn't have to come about or gybe, as I just eased the sheets and we immediately started planing for the beach. (And with more than 400 pounds of crew weight you can imagine the breeze!) Needless to say, I didn't need to raise the board...

The rest of the ride home was thrilling, though uneventful. My kids still enjoy sailing; the cousins won't have a thing to do with it. Now I always start upwind, in any weather.