Anyone got a spare one of these laying around?

http://www.murrays.com/mm5/merchant...;Product_Code=56-9633&Category_Code=

I guess they're back ordered at Murray's and don't expect to get them in any time soon. By the way, finally got my boat back to Oahu from Maui. What a fun sail.

Tim

I used vectran (or amsteel blue) on my boats instead of the steel part. You'll need some smooth shackles on the furler to tie/splice the loop to and you'll probably want to run some mid-pole bridles from the spin pole out to the hulls to give the pole and soft-loop side to side stability. This is the way the initial Nacra F18 was rigged with it's furler... you don't need that steel fitting.

This also let me set the elevation of the end of the spinnaker pole and then adjust the middle elevation of the pole so it didn't carry so much pre-bend (making it prone to breaking).

Yup....do what Jake said. Those parts are prone to failing (don't ask me how I know)......and usually at the most inopportune time!

Question: Does the new part, http://www.murrays.com/mm5/merchant...amp;Category_Code=C-NF&Store_Code=MS, have the same failure tendencies? I've never heard of it but just checking...

That works pretty well. I have had one of those on my last N20 and one on the Infusion I currently sail. I still use it...works fine. However, I don't think you can use that with a furler.

Also, as I mentioned before, be cautious about the amount of prebend you have to put in the pole because you cannot adjust the location of that fitting. I had to string the pole under that fitting on my last 20 to reduce the prebend.

Yeah, i'll probably end up going with line. I had rigged my aluminum pole with line before but ended up bending it because i didn't do a good enough job securing it in the middle. I'm going to try a carbon pole this time around in addition to securing it better. Also, i believe i have a stock n20 spin but needed a 14 foot pole with a bunch of prebend to get proper luff tension. Is that normal? My carbon pole is 15 feet long so i'm going to play around with the tack location a bit.

If you were using the spin I sent you, something wasn't right. How much rake do you have on the mast? It was on a 20 with a 12' pole here with no problems.

Yeah, it's that spin. I'll check my rake but the boat feels pretty balanced so i don't think that's the issue. From what jake's describing, it seems i'm rigging my pole quite a bit higher than he was, just below my furler. I think i'm trading off pole height with pole length in this case for luff tension. I'm not really racing smod so it doesn't really matter. Although i'm curious to hear everyone's opinion if having a higher, but longer pole is a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing to have a longer pole (that's what she said). It will mess with sheeting angles and the kite will really want to be sheeted further forward to fly properly. You may have problems keeping the top of the sail from collapsing if you don't also move the sheeting points forward (not easy to do).

Roger. And just checking. The spin hoists to the bail and not the block, correct?

Yes, you are correct. Your halyard should have a stopper ball at the knot that ties it to the head of the kite that stops on the bail and prevents the sail from being sucked up behind it.

If you have the bail system, you are going to have to get the end of the spin pole lower than normal. The spinnaker luffs mysteriously grew sometime between the bail system and the line systems that were installed on the masts (that, or my hoist heights kept getting lower on my factory masts). In order to get a newer kite to work on that system, you will need to pre-bend the pole about 30% shy of breaking it if you don't ease the middle section. Lord help you if you run internal rigging and fittings that weaken the pole further!