Spinnaker area

[dave_gibsea]

OK I can do "half-base x height" to work our our main and headsail areas but can someone explain how the spinnaker area is calculated??
Regards, Dave

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[jsl]

I thought I (once, long ago) understood that the official area for racing purposes was defined as the triangle - which was one of the reasons that spinnakers were such popular racing sails. I suppose you could produce a decent approximation of true (cloth) area by treating it as a quarter-sphere of radius J (or whatever is your pole length) plus a half-cylinder of the same radius, height measured or estimated, to allow for the lower part of the sail.

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[bedouin]

In rating terms there is a complex formula for the size of a spinnaker - for details see the RORC site (www.rorcrating.com).

In real life spinnakers vary so much in cut that it is difficult to calculate the real area from the standard measurements

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[samuel]

Cut it up in 12 inch squares & count how many you are left with !!
See its easy when you aply some though !!!

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