Dead downwind with a cruising chute.

[Bosun Higgs]

Got to agree with Flaming about snuffers. Just too many bits of string to get tangled. Create more problems than they solve.

 

[capnsensible]

Agree snuffers are dodgy.

Some years ago I was doing the Gib regatta, one race in the morning, second in afternoon. I got the hump with the spinnaker snuffer and cut it off in the wait between the 2 races. Was a tad careless with the knife and sliced a gash in one of my fingers. We had a nurse in the crew but she fainted so wrapped digit up in duct tape. Came second in race.

Got 7th overall in regatta and got a kiss of Miss Gibraltar at prizegiving.

Scar still very visible....from knife, not Miss Gib.

 

[doug748]

I have followed this with great interest and even understood large parts of it.
A small spinnaker for dead downwind and a cruising chute for off the wind for me. Always singlehanded, I hoist them behind the main on a run, after getting rid of the genoa, and drag them in under the boom into the companionway. As soon as the breeze tops 10kts I am thinking of getting them in.
Snuffers mean you have to perform at two ends of the boat at once, I sold mine.

 

[PeteCooper]

get the autohelm (or SWMBO) to drive whilst you rig the gear.
Turn onto a very broad (165-170 true) reach.
Put the guy in the pole, and set the pole to the height you want.
Open the spinnaker bag and return to the cockpit.
gently pull the guy until the corner of the sail is at the pole, but the pole is still at the forestay. Lock off the guy.
Set the sheet so that there is only a small amount of slack with the sail still in the bag, and lock it off.
hoist the sail with the halyard.
Gently pull / wind on the guy so that the pole comes off the forestay and the sail fills with wind. Continue to wind back the guy and ease on the sheet until you have the pole where you want it, and the spinnaker flying. Then tension the pole down.
now furl the genoa.

to drop is basically the reverse.

Unfurl the genoa.
Ease the pole to the forestay, whilst trimming in on the sheet until the spinnaker is fairly tight along the foot and not very (if at all) full of wind.
Fetch the lazy guy and run it down the hatch.
Run the halyard around a winch so that there's only 1/2 or 1/4 of a turn
Completley blow the guy.
Start pulling in on the lazy guy until you meet resistance - try and go along the foot, rather than up the side of the sail.
Once you can't pull any more sail to you, release the halyard - the part turn of the halyard round the winch should slow its descent enough to allow you to stuff the sail down the hatch without getting it wet.

And hey presto - one sail dropped without having to go on the foredeck. Magic.

Exactly right - it's very straight forward - works for me reliably both on my 26 footer and a Moody 31 I regularly sail - both singlehanded..

 

[pugwash94]

That undoubtedly does apply to some multis and fast monos but it doesn not apply to all boats. For example on my boat you would have to go more than 20 degrees off a dead downwind course even to get the genoa to properly fill, and a bit more than that to get boat speed through the water as fast as goosewinged. Altogether different with, for example, a J109 flying a gennaker from a pole as I know from racing against them. Horses for courses

At 20 degrees of the rhumb line you only need an increase in speed of about 6.5%, at 25 degrees - 10% and 30 degrees 15%.

There are few boats that won't achieve these figures and as I say you will have more comfortable and hassle free sailing.

It took me a while to keep doing it - the tendency was always to fail to make the deviation from the course enough when simply "eyeballing" it, so I now work it out properly.

It always works for me. Coming back up the Solent a couple of weeks ago I passed an Bavaria 34 in my elderly Dufour 31. He was heading direct for Calshot with Cruising chute and I had only main and genoa. I went via Newtown - or thereabouts and passed far ahead of him.

 

[Twister_Ken]

Poling out the tack on a cruisy chute.

Does it need to be a pukka spinnaker pole, or can something shorter and lighter be used?

 

[flaming]

Poling out the tack on a cruisy chute.

Does it need to be a pukka spinnaker pole, or can something shorter and lighter be used?

No reason why you can't use anything - other than strength. The biggest loads on the pole will come when it's nearly on the forestay - when you may not want to use it in the first place. So if you were careful not to use it when you could just use it tacked to the bow, you could get away with a thinner pole....

The shorter thing can be more of an issue. If your pole is short enough so it will fit inside the forestay at its "working" height, then you could get yourself in a mess, with the tack going inside the forestay when you're trying to get the tack back off the pole, and onto the bow again. That might well collapse the front of the chute, and then if you're not careful, you're in wrapping teritory - unless you've unrolled the jib, in which case you do of course run the rish of spearing your pole straight through it. If you were aware of the issue, there's no reason why you couldn't make it work - but it does come with its inherant dangers.

Oh, and a shorter pole will of course project less sail area - so get less advantge!

 

[Bosun Higgs]

At 20 degrees of the rhumb line you only need an increase in speed of about 6.5%, at 25 degrees - 10% and 30 degrees 15%.

There are few boats that won't achieve these figures and as I say you will have more comfortable and hassle free sailing.

.

I disagree. Dead downwind ie goosewinged, my boat will go faster than it does on a broad reach until the wind is maybe 30 degrees off the stern. The reason is that the genoa is shielded by the main until the wind is at least 20 degrees off the stern and it just flaps doing nothing much. Masthead rig and not a lot of sail area.

What sort of rig do you have?

 

[pagoda]

Poling out the tack on a cruisy chute.

What's all the fuss about cruising chutes (assymetrics) versus standard spinnakers?
I sail a cruising chute exactly as I would a performance dinghy assymmetric- hoist, sail, gybe, gybe, etc...

Do not go too deep and lose power to an inappropriately set main.. gybe and head up a touch to get the power on again??
Sheet the main in a wee bit hard for the circumstances- keeps clean air on the chute? Less clever over 10-12Kts, bit does help.
Dead downwind , if you insist.. either pole out the genny goosewinged or hoist a standard spinny. Less easy I will agree if short handed.
Non symmetric chutes are much LESS suited to dead down wind.

Me .. I'd rather be on a deep reach than messing with dead downwind...

Graeme

 

[flaming]

I disagree. Dead downwind ie goosewinged, my boat will go faster than it does on a broad reach until the wind is maybe 30 degrees off the stern. The reason is that the genoa is shielded by the main until the wind is at least 20 degrees off the stern and it just flaps doing nothing much. Masthead rig and not a lot of sail area.

What sort of rig do you have?

In a typical symetrical rigger boat, the gybe angle with a spinnaker in the sort of breeze that cruisers fly chutes in (say 10-12 knots) is going to be about 30-40 degrees. That's to say that in that sort of wind strength I'm aiming at a true wind angle of 160-165. In less wind the angle is even bigger.

So if your boat would carry a symetrical spinnaker on the race course, then you need to aim for about those sorts of angles, even if you have poled out the tack of a cruising chute. Or just pole the thing right back and accept that you will be slower - but that's why you're cruising of course!

I agree that it does make a difference when you decide not to fly a chute and just have a Genoa. It is however quite possible to hold a polled out headsail about 20 degrees from DDW.

 

[Joker]

No pole. Goosewinged. Boat on autohelm for an hour or so.

 

[davidfox]

I sailed on a yacht two years ago with a cruising chute and running dead downwind we actually goose-winged. Don't know whether this is legitamate but it worked extremely well.
To dowse it gybe the main over and then its in the shadow again.

Did it ourselves yesterday, let the tack off a way and the main on the otherside keeps the chute inflated, dont need a pole in that situation.

 

[Twister_Ken]

Did it ourselves yesterday, let the tack off a way and the main on the otherside keeps the chute inflated, dont need a pole in that situation.

I suspect you do as soon as the boat rolls.