With respect to the spinnaker, it definately pays to start at 10 knots, rehearse the procedures of setting and retrieving and than work your way up to 20 knots or so. Doing it by hand may feel awkward in the beginning and cumbersome but with a little practise you work out a way of doing things that will work very well. Only problem you will be faced with each time are the jib sheet lines on the Taipan. I've worked with snuffer before and they are handy but please don't think that a snuffer is much easier all of the time.

I tie my halyard to the mastfoot or an eyeled near the mast and through to loop over the back. An alternative I've become to use more often when signlehanding is to drop the halyard on the tramp as I go and never touch it again. Often it lies on the front part where you don't move about anyway when signlehanding. Than when retrieving I uncleat the halyard and it smoothly runs through the cleat without any knots. Trick is the not touch it, tie it up or move it about with your knees or feet between sets and drops.

for my own boat I working on a pully system that will pull away the halyard together with the double block near the spi pole or the tack of the spi itself. I'm confident that that will work.

What kind of bag are you using, with zippers or velcro, hobie style or side load style ? Have you pulled your crew trapeze wire afte to the sidestay ?

Best maybe is to perfect the manual setting and retrieving when you sail the boat without the jib. Let your crew focus completely on the spi.

It is really nice to see you and your brother having so much fun !

Wouter

The snuffer hoops in mainlanf EU are all moving to wide diamerter hoops, in the order of 50 cm (500 mm) or just less.

For an ovveriew of all systems go to :

http://www.taipan-sailing.de/spinnakersystem.html

the one I'm refering to is ;

http://www.taipan-sailing.de/pictures/midpole1.jpg

It is often just taped to the spi pole.

WOuter

If you have a "snuffer" your hoist line goes back through a block on the aft beam and becomes the retrieval line.. again throw it overboard and it shouldnt easily knot

Great Story Kurt!!

Sailing with a kite on a Taipan with a combined crew weight of (I'm guessing) 90 odd kilos in 15knots is an impressive acheivement. You must have excellent skills and no fear - look out Glen Ashby!

I don't sail with a spinnaker myself as yet but suspect that if you and your crew can learn to set and douse your kite off the tramp from a bag and do it efficiently you will have a less windage on your kite and won't suffer as much of an upwind penalty as those boats using snuffers (others may wish to comment on this) This could give you a winning edge. Having the skill of launching from a bag would also help you if ended up sailing one day on a type of boat that always launches from a bag or off the deck eg. 18'skiff, 49er, ocean going yacht etc.

To sail single handed without a snuffer would be practically impossible though.

Rick White's book, "Catamaran Racing for the Nineties" has an excellent chapter on sailing with a spinaker which would probably be of use to you. In fact the whole book is filled with useful information.

I enjoyed your story so much I'm going to upload it to the Taipan website if you don't mind:

http://www.taipan.asn.au

Rob Wilson
Taipan 4.9 AUS175

Sorry all, camera unavailable on the weekend so will have to wait until next week to take and upload pictures.

18cm might be a little bigger than it was now that I think about it. Can't really measure again because I took out some frustration on it - also found out how strong it was too

Also, the size of your ring will depend on how big your kite is (mine's slightly bigger than F16 at just over 18sqm) and how many retrieval holes you have. I have three which makes a fair bunch when its going in.

cheers,

Berthos....
A far as Im aware.. only 12s 16s and 18teens use bags.. Mainly due to their kites large sizes in relation to the hull.. 16 & 18 have the extra hand who bags the kite anyway.. So it not the challenge the two handers 12s, 49er Javelins, Cherubs and 14s have..
In general the two handers all use spinacker tubes apart from the 12s..

But any monkey who can keep a 12 upright in any conditon wouldn't be worried by bagging a 400-1000 ft2 kite.. They are a breed apart..

rob
go ahead and post it on the taipan web site,


most of the time i sail single handed 74kg (now with kite)

i go out about 4 times a week i try to get out as much as possible
id love too bet gleen ashby [color:"blue"] [/color] [color:"blue"] [/color] [color:"blue"] [/color]

i tryed get the kite ready be for the f-16 states but no luck or trailor but ill try make it next year

it is actualy verry easy to sail with a spinnaker from my point of veiw ,others may not belive so, and i do sail on a few other boats scud f-28R a few keel yachts but cats are the way to go

thanx for all the help every one its been a great

regards kurt
taipan aus 029

Sounds like a good idea to throw the halyard overboard to straighten it out, but with 20m of rope trailing behind you another problem can occur : Another boat could run over the halyard & get tangled, this happened a few weeks ago at a big regatta with keelboats, dinghies & cats - about 400 boats on the water. A Peterson 33 (about 4 tons) ran over the trailing halyard of an Inter-20 & got it wrapped in the rudder-pin (Guess who won that altercation ?) The Peterson carried on straight, the I-20 slowed down quickly, stopped dead, and then charged off backwards with the spinn. still up ! This presented a new problem, since the I-20 skipper couldn`t drop the spinn with 4 tons of keelboat on the end of the halyard. Luckily he had a hook-knife - cost him a new halyard. Unfortunately he had no rights would there have been a protest - his halyard was not in it`s normal sailing position at the time of the incident. Luckily both parties saw the humor to it & there was no protest, just a friendly exchange of words. I`d love to have seen the I-20 skipper`s face doing 6 knots backward with the chute up, though !
If you fit a snuffer, the halyard is a continous line to the spinn. patches & doubles up as a retrieve line - it will seldom get knotted since there is very little slack in it if you get the length right.

Ahh but that is why we here now fix the end of the halyard to the mast base and only have (8 + 4) mtr / 2 - 2,5 mtr = 3,5 mtr of line trailering behind the boat. Much less than the 8 + 4 - 2,5 = 9,5 mtr of the older methode.

8 mtr. is the distance from bag to spi gate
4 mtr. is the excess of line after the tack is pulled out.
2,5 mtr. is the length of the trampoline and hulls which are behind the mast foot.

Wouter