Spinnaker pole downhaul setup

[Iain C]

Right, I'm off down to the boat this weekend to hopefully finish my coachroof winching project. Clutches/winches are all installed, time to reeve everything, and modify the kite arrangement

The boat is 27' with a full and powerful masthead kite. The pole is a double ender, dinghy style, so you swap ends at each gybe. I've already changed from a centre mounted uphaul/downhaul to a bridle system, and this has reduced the bending hugeley. Problem is that at the moment the downhaul emerges at the mast base and goes at a very acute angle up to the bridle, so all the load is on one side of the bridle only, and it's a bugger to gybe.

The big question is this...am I right in saying that I really want the downhaul almost vertically under the bridle and mid-point of the pole?

If so I was going to mount a pad-eye on the foredeck, and have the pole on a 2:1 led back along the stanchion bases to a cleat in the cockpit.

Thanks

 

[awol]

Yes, no and maybe. There is one advantage to the downhaul from the base of the mast which is that you don't need to adjust it when you move the guy. If you add a block to the foredeck it will certainly improve the bridle pull but you would be better with 2 blocks and a double length guy that is adjustable from both sides of the boat - so 2 cleats aft. Ut means that you can adjust the guy and downhaul together whichever gybe you are on. Hope that makes sense.

 

[Rigger Mortice]

You may find this helpful

http://www.harken.com/rigtips/spinnaker.php

 

[Ceirwan]

The boats I've sailed on have always used a block mounted to a eye bolted to the deck and led aft, I'm sure there's a more efficient solution out there.

Make sure you put a decent backing pad on the eye, not just the washers!

 

[William_H]

Spin downhaul

I have used a few systems on my little boat. None really ideal.
What I am using now is fairly common to boats of your size. (around here) That is no downhaul. The spin sheets go through a pulley on the end of a tweaker rope. The tweaker rope goes through a pulley mounted about halfway from mast to bow and on the gunwhale. The tweaker is pulled down on the guy so providing a pole down force via the guy. (sometimes called the brace).
This means when gybing the pole is end for ended and the crew have to remember to pull on the tweaker of the new guy.and release the old tweaker.
The problems with this are that the tweaker needs to lead from near the bow to give good down haul power but if it is too far forward it stops the pole coming aft enough when running . ie pole can't go out to the side unless you ease the tweaker so have no down haul effect.

Possibly the best down haul I have used for long legs is a separate down haul each side from pulleys mounted along the gunwhales but further forward ie about 1/3 distance bow to mast. The down hauls have a snap shackle on each which attaches to a saddle on each end of the pole. So the pull is from the end of the pole from a point on the deck bellow the middle of the range of pole angle from ahead to abeam. This system is another rope to attach/detach from pole end when gybing but gives really good easy control of spin down haul and provides some assistance to the guy when the pole is on the forestay. (shy) I had a knot in the down haul sited to stop the pole going too high if it is not pulled on.

The method you have spoken of. Using a rope or indeed a tackle form the base of the mast to the middle of the pole (or bridle) has limited downward power because the attachment is at the base of the mast. An attachment further forward will give better leverage but then must be adjusted as the pole swings back. Even using a bridle you will need a 2 purchase or more to get enough down haul power.
So mean time I have destroyed the pole ends of one pole through constant skying of the pole due to tweaker being forgotten or it not having enough power. I use very light dinghy type pole ends which bend easily but one has eventually failed in fatigue of being straightened.
So there is my story on down haul. In a kind of sailing with short spin runs and frequent gybing. Typically gybing 4 times each Sunday. good luck olewill

 

[prv]

It's donkey's years since I've done any racing, but I'd certainly expect to see a downhaul coming up from approximately the middle of the foredeck, not from the mast.

Pete

 

[john_morris_uk]

The boats I've sailed on have always used a block mounted to a eye bolted to the deck and led aft, I'm sure there's a more efficient solution out there.

Make sure you put a decent backing pad on the eye, not just the washers!

I agree - I don't ever recall seeing a yacht with the pole downhaul rigged to the base of the mast. Its usually from well forward in the boat and led aft. When the kite is up and you want to bring the pole back, you ease the downhaul (which makes it more of a 'brace it forwards and pull down' line than just a 'down haul') and grind in on the guy'. Lots of novices forget to ease the downhaul and just grind in on the guy and then wonder why the pole isn't coming aft...

If you have single line working - ie only one sheet and one guy, then you can use tweakers if necessary. The tweaker is a snatch block or small block on the sheet/guy and pulls it down to the rail midships usually via another small block with a line lead aft when that side's sheet/guy is the 'guy'. This helps stop the pole skying. On some boats - depending on the angles etc you can sometimes get away without tweakers.

Hope you follow all that...

 

[yoda]

I have a bridle and downhaul led to the base of the mast on a 2:1 puchase. While not ideal it does make adjusting sheet and guy very easy as there is no need to change the downhaul. When gybing a small amount of slack is needed in the down haul just to allow the inner end of the pole come free of the eye because the dowhaul would otherwise be pulling the pole hard against the mast. My boat will have about the same size kite as yours.

Yoda

 

[Bosun Higgs]

Right, I'm off down to the boat this weekend to hopefully finish my coachroof winching project. Clutches/winches are all installed, time to reeve everything, and modify the kite arrangement

The boat is 27' with a full and powerful masthead kite. The pole is a double ender, dinghy style, so you swap ends at each gybe. I've already changed from a centre mounted uphaul/downhaul to a bridle system, and this has reduced the bending hugeley. Problem is that at the moment the downhaul emerges at the mast base and goes at a very acute angle up to the bridle, so all the load is on one side of the bridle only, and it's a bugger to gybe.

The big question is this...am I right in saying that I really want the downhaul almost vertically under the bridle and mid-point of the pole?

If so I was going to mount a pad-eye on the foredeck, and have the pole on a 2:1 led back along the stanchion bases to a cleat in the cockpit.

Thanks

I have a 36 foot masthead rigged boat and the spinny system that Bowman installed from new has a downhaul running to the base of the mast. In strict engineering terms it would be better to run the downhaul at right angles to the pole but the present arrangement works fine on my boat Which we race so the spinny is up in strongish winds) and should work OK on a smaller 27 footer.

 

[Iain C]

Thanks again for all the replies. Coachroof winching project is all finished, it's just the downhaul to do.

After rigging everything up at the weekend and having a look at the boat beam on from a decent distance away on the adjacent pontoon, the bridle system is all wrong. The pole uphaul is too low down the mast, and the angles to acute to the downhaul for it to really work. In addition, if I did do a perpendicualr downhaul, it would basically need to go forward (!) to the foredeck, down through the forehatch, or if it goes behind the forehatch, it's as close to the mast as makes no difference, so I'm out of options really.

So I've ditched the bridle and will go back to the original eyes in the middle of the pole, with a better 2:1 downhaul to the mast foot. At the moment the sheet and guy go through double blocks on the genoa tracks (which are a long way back on a Sabre) which work fine and add an element of "down". However I will experiment with tweakers running through these instead...I can then go for quarter blocks (rigged with a strop on the aft cleats), and then I could utilise the remotes I am installing on the genoa cars too. So, during the gybe, you would pull the car right forward (from the cockpit) and then pull the tweaker in too (also from the cockpit) and let the other side go. If it's anything like a dinghy (twinning line system) this should keep the kite nicely under manners.

Only thing is now I'm back with a slightly bendy pole. Best thing I can think of here is chopping up an old RS800 carbon mast I have, adding another layer or two of carbon weave, and hey presto, strong and light! Will also complement my gold anodised rig and general 1970's cruising caravan look perfectly!

Thanks again.

 

[Greenheart]

Fast forward six years...similar question, but for a dinghy. I've not used my spinnaker pole, nor have I seen how it should be rigged.

Amongst the bits and pieces with the boat, came a sort of tortured loop of steel, around three inches long. Only recently, it occurred to me that this might be the support for the spinnaker pole, but there's nothing to show how it should be controlled.

Here's my best guess, and you can tell me what's wrong with it. I mocked it up in miniature at home, so visualise it all scaled up...

The white line at the top is 8mm shockcord. My plan is to secure that to a point high on the front of the mast, up by the spreaders...

...so there's always upward tension, and the pole can be adjusted up and down, by the blue line led to port and starboard side-decks.

What I can't tell, is where previous crews must have secured the pole-downhaul. There's no fairlead or hook on mast or deck, nor any dedicated cleat nearby. My photo mock-up above shows fairleads, though I might use blocks, approximately at the mast gate.

Given that no obvious system was preferred, I feel free to decide. Where might be the best place or places to route the downhaul to, in order to get the best angle for purchase, without being complicated or obstructive in use?

 

[William_H]

A small simple dinghy will have small plastic hooks mounted abeam the mast on the gunwhales so that the brace can be pulled down and hooked under to hold the brace down and so pole down. From there you might go to a down haul each side to pull down the brace. Something like a loop in your picture through which the brace runs. The rope on the loop then goes through a pulley on the gunwhale about half way between the mast and bow.
I have not seen a dedicated down haul to the pole on a dinghy. Indeed I do not use one on my 21ft KB rather using kicker on the brace to pull the brace down.
The location of the hook or the kicker systems (if you can call it that) is a compromise. Too far forward and it is difficult to get the pole out square on a square run but too far aft and you don't get the down pull power via the brace when running shy.
I can't see the point of the steel ring in the above picture unless there was once 2 rings. olewill

 

[Daydream believer]

The alternative for the OP would be to take the downhaul to the forestay or very near to it & do dip pole gybes. very quick, easy to do , less chance of loosing control of the pole mid gybe & no bending on the pole. Only one down haul line . When running the lazy guy can be bought into play from amid ships to give some extra down force in heavy wind if needed.
The crew can sit safely on the pulpit in front of the forestay looking aft He has the new guy sitting loose in his hand ready to hook on & the pole can be swung from side to side ( pulling it to the centre with a short length of webbing fitted to the end which also disengages the end fitting from the guy) As it goes low down to clear the forestay he just hooks on to the new guy & helps the pole through & over the pulpit. the crew is safe. I watched a boat do this once & it took seconds & was so neat the spinnaker stayed full & one hardly knew it had been done. The main point was that it had been done in complete safety for the crew on the bow. If the spinnaker ring is not on a slider on the mast so it can be raised up a bit then the pole needs to be cut so that it can be swung over the pulpit then down under the forestay & back over the pulpit the other side easily. But any racing boat really needs a slider on the mast to adjust pole height correctly anyway
The trouble with end for end gybes ( I had 2 stellas for 14 years) is that if the crew let the sheets off carelessly the person with the pole could get overbalanced & miss the end of the new sheet leading to all sorts of problems with a pole waving in the breeze hooked on to one end of a spinnaker but nothing on the other. Leads to bad language:nonchalance:

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

What Dan has there is for a flyaway pole, a dinghy thing really. I've not seen one with an elastic uphaul - the ones I've seen have a normal uphaul line, mast sheave, back to cockpit etc..

Instead of your two fairleads I've seen a double block mounted near the mast base, but this is a point being discussed on another thread. Should it be near the mast or the forestay? At the mast the pole can swing in and out unimpeded, controlled by the guy. Downside is that it can be reluctant to swing inwards in light airs, and the pole is never actually 'locked' into any position. If it's at the forestay the pole is locked by the opposing guy and downhaul, which is great until you want to trim it and you need to do the guy and the uphaul - not so easy.

Either way, fairleads will work but with a bit more friction than a block.

 

[Greenheart]

Thanks for your ideas and impressions gentlemen.

My use of shockcord for the uphaul was to make permanent upward tension in use, enabling just the downhaul to control both upward and downward pole adjustment...hence no uphaul tail needing cleating/releasing/adjusting, and one less line to clutter the mast.

I have barber-haulers (in place of separate guys, as I understand it), rigged to haul the windward clew down towards the shroud-bases.

It's really surprising how varied and how vague the descriptions of controlling spinnakers are, online. Not to mention terminology - every account is written by someone who clearly knows what he means, but there's often as much difference between terms and specifics as there is diversity between boats. I expect once I understand my own set-up, my description of it to anyone who hasn't seen it, will be as impenetrable as I find everyone else's.

I think I may have undermined my own description by not showing my spinn pole, whose mid-area has two attachment points...

...I've assumed that these aren't actually for attachment - rather, they form 'blockers' to hold the downhaul ring at the mid-point, in the same way that a purpose-designed ramp does...

Of course, that may not be how they're meant to be used - I see how easily the ring might jump off my blockers under stress.

But if those attachment points are meant to have the uphaul/downhaul tied on, it'll make unshipping the pole when it's no longer in use, more complicated and time-consuming - and troublesome, for a singlehander.

So I'm hoping it'll be possible to set up the pole without tied attachments. The pole-ends are the usual spring-loaded hooks...

...maybe I could rig up a similar sprung hook midway along the pole, to remotely grip and release the downhaul-ring when needed?

PS, sorry for the over-size photos in this post... :hopeless:

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

You're right first time, the ring 'sort of' locks in the middle. The general idea being that the pole stows along the main boom, and when shoved forwards the ring slides along and lands in the right place.

The elastic uphaul may not be a good idea. The guy tension has a downward component which opposes the up of the spinnaker. Without the proverbial 'inextensible' up and downhauls it means that the outer end of the pole will go up and down as the breeze varies, and I find that generally happens just when you don't want it to. You should find that when you've got the pole height set you never need to adjust it again - thanks to the flyaway system.

 

[Daydream believer]

Using the spinnaker correctly one wuld want to trim the spinnaker pole height regularly for angle of wind & wind strength

On my squib the fly away pole has the up haul & down haul fitted to the pole end. The controls are lead to the crew position for quick adjustment.
However, when my daughter sails the boat I find that she removes that pole & fits a pole with 2 opposing cleats at mid point . The pole then drops back against the boom but the end slips into a plastic loop so it does not drop down when not supported. The up haul & down hauls are thus still joined but removed from the pole
Silly idea but she did it that way in her cadet years & still does it.

So in the end -- to each her/his own.

 

[Greenheart]

Thanks again gents...I think I'll have a try with the half-formed concept I've devised (or unwittingly copied), and alter if it's really poor.

It occurs to me that I could hook a few inches of line around the GRP deck edge next to the mast, holding blocks that will angle the downhaul out to the sidedecks, without needing any holes drilled or firm decisions about where the 'pole-kicker' is best secured.

I guess most spinnaker and pole systems have been designed to be slickly handled by a dedicated crew-member, so expecting any proven system to suit the idle singlehander's convenience is asking a lot.

I won't hoist the spinnaker for the first time in more than about five knots of breeze, so I'll hopefully spot what doesn't work before the consequences are a problem. Matter of fact, I'll try it ashore first.

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

Using the spinnaker correctly one wuld want to trim the spinnaker pole height regularly for angle of wind & wind strength

You're absolutely right - I assume that I was just thinking of the initial setup when I added that as an afterthought. How many times do I need to be reminded to try and comprehend my own utterances?