From: roy@mchip00.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.boats
Subject: Re: sail-handling question
Date: 28 Sep 92 13:47:39 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: New York University, School of Medicine

jfh@cs.brown.edu (John F. Hughes) writes: suppose you have only two
> people, and want to handle a spinnaker. How do you do it?

	On a J/24, Ellen and I often fly the chute double-handed.
Granted, we generally only do so in light winds (10-12 would probably
be our limit for doublehanding the chute), and I'm not sure how this
would translate to a larger boat.

	On the set, one person drives.  The other person gets the pole
hoisted, with the guy in the pole end and then comes back to the
companionway.  The way our boat is rigged, we launch the chute from
the companionway hatch.  A person standing in the hatch has the sheet
and guy right there.  The spin halyard cleats on the mast with a
Harken cam-cleat and is normally done by the foredeck, but can also be
done in a pinch by somebody in the hatch (you just pull it through the
cleat and it stays there when you let go).  The sheet generally gets
pre-cleated at some point roughly where proper trim will be when the
chute is up.  When we're all set, the person in the hatch does the
halyard and the person driving does the guy.  As soon as the chute is
flying, the helm hands the guy to the crew who then finds a reasonably
good trim point for the guy, cleats it off, and then turns around to
adjust the sheet.  Once it properly trimmed, either the crew actively
trims the sheet, or you can just cleat the sheet off too and have the
helmsman steer to the luff.

	On gybes, we get ddw, with the pole trimmed way back.  The
helmsman then takes both the sheet and guy and the crew goes forward
to gybe the pole (end-for-end).  The helmsman gybes the main as the
boat comes through the wind and then hands the sheet and guy back to
the crew who trims them as we come up on the other gybe.

	On a takedown, we start by overtrimming the sheet.  The
helmsman has the guy, ready to let run.  The crew (again, in the
companionway hatch) starts to gather in the foot of the chute starting
at the clew, with the helmsman easing guy until the crew gets to the
tack, then the crew releases the spin halyard (takes a good jerk in
the right direction to pop it out of the mast cleat) and gathers the
rest of the sail and stuffs it down the hatch.

	It sounds pretty easy, doesn't it?  I did, however, leave out
the occasional screaming and yelling, the wild gyrations on the helm
as the helmsman attemps to trim sheet and guy while steering with his
knees (having a tiller at least makes steering with your knees
possible), the frantic attempts to get the chute out of the water
before it wraps itself around the keel, etc, etc.  It's not really as
bad as all that; we do get it up and flying, most of the time without
any major problems.  The big problem with flying it double-handed is
when something goes wrong, disaster recovery is a lot more difficult.

>(4) My pole has a bridle for the pole-lift, but no bridle for a foreguy or
>any attachment on deck for it. Any suggestions about where I might rig the
>attachment point? 

	Depending on what you are trying to do, your deck attachment
point can be anywhere from the base of the mast to the base of the
forestay.  There is a geometric tradeoff.  At the base of the mast,
you have the advantage that you don't really have to adjust the
foreguy (I'd call it a downhaul in that configuration) as you trim the
pole forward or back, since the downhaul, inboard pole end, and pole
topping lift will all pivot along the same line (i.e. the leading edge
of the mast).  You don't even have to adjust it when you gybe; you
generally will just have to ease it an inch or two before you start
the gybe to make it easier to get the pole back on the ring.  On the
other hand, with the foreguy further forward, it is more efficient at
holding the outboard end of the pole down on a tight reach when the
pole is trying to sky.  Downward force on the pole is provided by a
combination of the downhaul/foreguy and the afterguy.  The further
forward you have the afterguy blocks rigged, the more downward force
you get from them, and the less you need from your downhaul/foreguy.
The latest thing in J/24's is to put the twings (essentially barber
haulers for the spin sheets) way forward, which effectively moves the
afterguy block way forward.  This provides enough downward pull from
the afterguy that you can eliminate the pole downhaul/foreguy
completely.  J/24 class rules require that you have a downhaul, but
they don't require that you actually use it, or even hook it up!
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