Asymmetric spinnaker or cruising chute?

[Iain C]

Again, thanks for everyone's input on here, this is all incredibly useful and I've learned a lot.

I do wonder if I'm just over-thinking things here a bit, and perhaps what I want as a cruising man on my cruising boat is a cruising chute. I'd still go with the bowsprit, but if I'm honest perhaps as a dinghy man I hadn't realised about where all these A-sails sit in terms of wind strengths and angles and weights. If I'm honest I probably want the most versatile sail I can get, that I have the maximum opportunity of flying downwind on any given day, and be realistic that although a Bav32 is a step up from the Sabre in terms of performance, she's no race boat, and as soon as things get breezy-ish on a reach, white sail will probably be fine anyway, especially with that dumbass mainsheet arrangement.

lw395 it certainly will not be some cross cut item, and as the loft building the sail will make it to measure including the bowsprit, perhaps if they can do something that is somewhere between a totally stable cruisey cruising chute and perhaps something a little more exciting and bigger, that will do the job, and as flaming points out, go and find a second hand race sail for a bit of a laugh with the lads in the light stuff...

 

[Tranona]

Suspect you will find the mainsheet less of an issue once you have sailed the boat. However, if it is long enough you can take the tail back to the rear of the cockpit, leave the clutch open and fit a cleat for it on the outside of the coaming. That is what I did on my 37. Did not offer full control but made dumping easier on the rare occasion it was necessary. In fact I had cleats on both sides which I also used for cleating off the mainsail preventer.

 

[Greenheart]

It's not normal to adjust the tack line in a dinghy. Anything fast enough to plane never eases the tack line.

Thanks! :encouragement:

...and as soon as things get breezy-ish on a reach, white sail will probably be fine anyway...

Exactly my thinking. Considering how little wind is too much for my full white-sail area, I doubt the kite will ever see more than 10 knots...

...but there are also plenty of days when all the white sail isn't enough.

 

[Greenheart]

Another thought...

I've never paid much attention to the lightweight line inside the luff of my "screecher", which I bought before laying my hands on a more suitable sail. But the luff-line is clearly adjustable. Why?

This sail has only 8ft of foot - so it doesn't need a bowsprit - but the luff-length is about 19ft, rather a lot for the 15ft 6inch height of my spinn halyard block. Can I tighten the luff-line to shorten the luff, so the head needn't be hoisted so high on the mast?

I'm imagining - hoping - that the wrinkles which a shorter luff-line would induce, will spread themselves evenly up the height of the sail. If the luff line doesn't or can't enable this rather flat sail to assume a different shape, what does it do? How limited is its use?

Below shows about the lowest point I can hoist the head to, without the whole flat sail bagging sideways. Sorry, those who've seen it all before. :sleeping: (And, if you've told me before and I've forgotten. )

 

[Iain C]

Guess you missed my little request to keep the thread on track here Mr Crane...

However that sail is far too small for the boat. Don't bother faffing around with lines, just get a kite that fits the boat better.

Oh, and after speaking again to my preferred loft, we're going for an all round sail, that's essentially just a slightly bigger cruising chute. After having taken some of the excellent advice on here, what I wanted was a downwind sail that was as versatile as possible and could be used over as wide a range of angles as possible, with perhaps a bit more emphasis on getting downhill rather than reaching. Full radial, dyneema lines, Maxilite 150 cloth. And the spawn of satan spinnaker snuffing system!

 

[Greenheart]

Sorry for the drift. I thought the adjustable luff-line might be a way to change the sail's profile, thereby allowing some crossover between the sail-types which are the basis of this thread. I've also got a nice full-bellied asymm, just haven't finished the chute and sprit yet...and meanwhile, I was thinking of trying out the black kite this weekend. I was thinking it's too tall, more than too small.

 

[langstonelayabout]

Also bear in mind that the length of your bowsprit may or may not give enough clearances for an inside gybe. We have a Selden bowsprit and are safer with outside gybes..We also fly a code0, which avoids the problem entirely.

Assuming the pole is 2' long and the luff isn't too tight it should be fine; I never had a problem when flying a 'small' 18 foot skiff asymmetric from the front of my similarly set up E-Boat.

 

[tudorsailor]

Can someone explain terminology? I have what I was told is a cruising chute/gennaker. It is marked with tack, clew and head. A friend has what he calls an asymmetric. It is marked with head, port corner and starboard corner. He thinks that for a starboard tack the corner marked stbd takes the sheet and the corner marked port effectively becomes the tack. Is this correct? If it is, how does one gybe?
Thanks

 

[flaming]

Can someone explain terminology? I have what I was told is a cruising chute/gennaker. It is marked with tack, clew and head. A friend has what he calls an asymmetric. It is marked with head, port corner and starboard corner. He thinks that for a starboard tack the corner marked stbd takes the sheet and the corner marked port effectively becomes the tack. Is this correct? If it is, how does one gybe?
Thanks

I don't think he has an Asymmetric....

 

[Greenheart]

Flaming is right, your friend has misunderstood the definition of 'asymmetric'. If it is necessary or possible to switch the tack and clew of the sail on alternate tacks, then the shape of the sail must necessarily be symmetrical.

If he really does switch tack and clew on an asymmetric, for alternate tacks, I would pay to see footage of it. :biggrin-new::biggrin-new:

 

[Martin&Rene]

Congratulations to everybody, this must be one of the most informative threads going, with little thread drift. I wish I could have read it, before I ordered my cruising chute a few years ago. Thankfully, as a Merlin Rocket sailor, I knew Steve Goacher of Goacher Sails and his advice was generally along the line of many of the members that really as a cruising sailor, you would mainly be using the chute in lighter winds on high AWAs so go for a large chute. As we normally only sail two up, my wife and I, I said do not go too large, so we compromised a bit. Having sailed for a few years now, I can see what he is getting at and if I was ordering one again, I would go for one with a fuller head. When we are on a beam reach in a force 4, we are going fast enough that we do not need any extra power.

We always use a snuffer, but I can see that somebody has once again referred to them as a PITA. I think there are a couple of little tricks that you need to know to really use the snuffer easily and effectively and I have done a detail write up of how we use a snuffer on the myhanse website.

https://www.myhanse.com/snuffers_topic10698_post89894.html?KW=snuffer#89894

Just scroll down a bit a look for Martin&Rene

On those really fluky days, when the wind keeps coming and going, we have sailed a few times down wind, motoring the flat bits and unsnuffing the chute when the wind pipes up a bit with no mainsail set. We had a glorious session up the Firth of Clyde last year with winds of 5-9kts with just the chute up and sometimes we were doing over 5kts. Thankfully I dropped, just before the wind went up to nearly 20kts.

 

[langstonelayabout]

We always use a snuffer, but I can see that somebody has once again referred to them as a PITA. I think there are a couple of little tricks that you need to know to really use the snuffer easily and effectively and I have done a detail write up of how we use a snuffer on the myhanse website.

https://www.myhanse.com/snuffers_topic10698_post89894.html?KW=snuffer#89894

Oh behave. This seems to be a link to a site that shows how to tame a device that is designed to tame another device.

As an ex-dinghy racer myself I've learned both symmetrical and asymmetrical spinnakers the hard way and although I'm open to the idea of a snuffer, it isn't on the top of my list of things to buy.

But then I said that about those dreadful stack-pack things. And they were so good I bought them for my last 2 boats...

 

[TLouth7]

If he really does switch tack and clew on an asymmetric, for alternate tacks, I would pay to see footage of it. :biggrin-new::biggrin-new:

I have done that on occasion, sadly don't have any footage. What happens is that you are sailing along the coast on a sunny afternoon in a pleasant breeze, and start to think that you would like to point a bit deeper. There is not much going on so you dig out a spare line and make yourself a guy. Now you can swing the chute out to windward just like a real spinnaker! But then you come to a headland/pier/group of lobster pots and realise that you need to be on the other tack for a couple of minutes. It's a lot of effort to untangle all the string and gybe properly, much easier to swap the pole over and sail for a minute with the chute backwards. Of course the new 'luff' is comically short and it's a pain to keep flying, but once past the obstruction you can get back to running deep with a minimum of fuss. If only there was a sail that would let you do all that without looking silly...

 

[PeterR]

I have not tested the difference between a racing asymmetric and a cruising chute as the OP asked but I did make a video to compare the performance of a 105% jib, a cruising chute (in fact two different cruising chutes} and a cruising code zero. Yes I know the latter term is something of a non-sequitur but it is a term in common usage. The video does address many of the issues people have raised regarding the merits of asymmetric sails and their relative performance.