Flying the asymmetrical chute

August 18 2013 at 1:58 PM

3) It doesn’t really need any sort of sprit like the sport boats have. They are running much larger chutes anyway and it seems that the displacement hull doesn’t need that much power.

4) Launching from the standard sail bag is a PITA; I need to get one of those square spinnaker turtle bags that I can lash to the pulpit.

5) Dousing; the easiest douse is to just let the tack go and then haul it in under the boom and right into the cabin.

6) I only run one spinnaker sheet; every time we have sailed it, it has been on a long fixed course so there seems to be no need to rig both sheets.

The boat will carry the chute easily from a broad reach even up to a close reach. In light air, like 5-10 knots, the difference is amazing. The boat will wallow on a broad reach and the jib just slaps around. Drop the jib and throw up the chute and she is immediately at hull speed.

In terms of a sprit; I have been messing around with a sprit, using some old carbon windsurfer mast pieces. Before developing a permanent setup I played around with lashing a sprit to the pulpit. I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t necessarily fly any better with a sprit. There isn’t really enough room on deck for a sprit and the anchor roller, bow cleat etc. Its just too much crap on deck. The anchor roller came with a bail. So I added a small Harken fiddle block to my anchor roller sprit, for the sail’s tack line. The fiddle block is held up with a short length of shock cord looped with hog rings. The anchor roller is plenty beefy. It is slightly of center but this doesn’t matter much. I have run the tack line inside and outside the pulpit. It seems to be a slightly cleaner run outside the pulpit.
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I can run the tack line back to the bow cleat. I pre-set it before setting the chute. I set from the foredeck, with my wife at the helm and on the sheet. I hoist the chute to the approx height and have her trim the sheet. Then I can fine tune the height and the tack tension before walking back to the cockpit.

Hoist about 1.5 feet from jumper. Unlike the rest of my running rigging lead back to the cockpit, the halyard is just run on the mast to a clam cleat mounted about 4 feet off the deck, it is not lead back to the cockpit because setting and dousing is a foredeck job and flying the chute is best done with 2 crew anyway:
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Fly the chute about 3-4 feet off deck:

 
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As I mentioned, we douse under the boom. From the foredeck, when ready I first release the tack line and just let it run. The chute streams out behind the mainsail. I then release the halyard and feed it to the crew so that we don’t let the sail fall in the water. Once the chute is in the cabin, I can reach to leeward and the crew can hand me the halyard, which I then take back up to the pulpit. Then I’ll go back to the cockpit and we can raise the jib to head back upwind. The last task is to pull the spinnaker sheet and get it out of the cockpit and down below.

We re-pack the chute and tidy up once back on the mooring.

Cheers

Dejan

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