img10999Now that you are familiar with the sail and its equipment, let's go through a set. The same procedures are involved in both large and small boats; each, respectively, just requires more or fewer people to do the job.

Careful preparation always precedes a spinnaker set, racing or cruising, and that begins with the last time the spinnaker was put away or "bagged."

To bag a spinnaker properly, first find the head of the sail (it will have a swivel attached to it and may even be marked). Follow one leech down from the head, making accordion pleats of large segments of sail and holding on to them as you gather them all the way to the clew (see Figure 42). Change hands and repeat on the other leech to its clew. Next, while one person holds the folded leeches and all three corners (head and two clews) together, another stuffs the spinnaker belly into the bag. The leeches go in last and the head between the clews. Leaving them outside the bag facilitates attaching halyard, sheet and guy the next time the sail is set.

Since the spinnaker is triangular, if two edges are untangled, the third must also be. And the above packing system will work 99 percent of the time.

When getting ready to set, first attach the sheet to the shroud, lifeline, or stanchion on the foredeck and lead them aft, one on each side, outside of everything, to the turning blocks at the stern or quarter, as shown in Figure 39, thence to the proper winches. Next, with the packed bag on deck or readily available, set the spinnaker pole by attaching the topping lift and downhaul and lifting the pole off the deck to the fitting on the mast. Snap the fitting on the pole's other end over the guy before lifting. The pole should be resting against the windward side of the headstay. If you are using a lazy sheet, it should be over the top of the pole and lightly taped to the wire guy so it doesn't come off before or during the set. Then it's ready for the first jibe. Next, attach the guy, sheet, and halyard to the respective corners of the spinnaker. Be sure the bag is secured to the boat so that it will not fly overboard as the sail goes up. Finally, check to be sure that the halyard leads correctly and is clear all the way up. You are now ready for the hoist, and the spinnaker should come out of the bag without a twist.

Alternate methods of preparing the spinnaker to avoid twists include "stopping," the bucket system, and a spinnaker sleeve. Stopping consists of furling the spinnaker with the two vertical edges together on the outside of the furl and tying it at intervals with easily breakable twine. Racing crews often "stop" storm spinnakers or heavy-duty spinnakers used in high winds. The sail is hoisted in stops, and breaks out when the sheet is pulled, breaking the lower stops. Then the wind fills the lower part of the spinnaker and breaks out all the stops farther up. An advantage of this method is that the sail can't fill when it's only half hoisted, which can be disastrous in heavy air.
The bucket system was developed by sailors who felt "stopping" was too time-consuming. Their system is to cut the bottom off a plastic bucket, stretch rubber bands around it and pass the spinnaker through head-first, keeping the leeches together and sliding the rubber bands onto the sail at desired intervals.

Spinnaker sleeves-called "snakes" or "turtles"-are used on large racing yachts. Starting at the head with the vertical edges lying parallel on top, tapered nylon cloth is zipped around the spinnaker about three-fourths of the way down. The bottom part of the chute is dog-legged and stopped with wool stops so that one leg leads to the pole and the other to the sheet. One of the zippered edges is longer than the other, so that when the spinnaker is set, the crew just pulls the zipper farther down; it comes off the shorter edge and separates all the way up to the head. The sleeve falls in the water and is pulled aboard by a retrieving line attached to the boat.

This is a tried and true system used on many ocean-racing yachts. Problems can arise if the spinnaker is allowed to twist inside the sleeve. As long as the sleeve is carefully zipped directly over the two vertical edges, this is unlikely to happen. Sometimes the spinnaker is sleeved at dockside by hoisting it aloft on a halyard and zipping the sleeve closed as the sail goes up. This facilitates aligning the leeches, and gravity keeps the sail from bunching up. However, since you are pulling down on the zipper, the Velcro at the top of the sleeve that keeps it from sliding away from the head of the sail can pop off, causing the zipper to open from the top down accidentally. It can be very embarrassing to have your spinnaker fill at dockside, knocking off other boats' masthead antennas and causing other damage. It's imperative, therefore, to tie a sail stop tightly around the top of the sleeve and the sail as a precautionary measure as you sleeve the sail. Remember to take off the stop when you bag the sail for stowing.

For the hoist of an unstopped, unsleeved spinnaker, the boat must be on a reach or a run, with a small amount of the sail pulled out of the bag ready to go. Then, with one crew in the cockpit tending the guy on the windward winch and another to leeward to tend the sheet, a third crew on the halyard hoists away. As the sail goes up, the guy is trimmed so that the "tack" meets the pole and the pole comes aft. The sheet is also trimmed moderately to further separate the corners of the sail.

To avoid a premature fill, the crew person on the halyard should hand-over-hand it rapidly until the sail is halfway up, then quickly wrap the halyard around the winch for the rest of the hoist. He must avoid having the spinnaker fill before the turns are on the winch. But if he puts turns on too soon, the friction of the winch slows the process and increases the possibility of the sail filling too soon. If that happens, the sail will be pulled from the bag too quickly and end up in the water, where it may rip or the boat may sail into it. On the other hand, if the sail fills with wind before the wraps are put on the winch, the halyard will burn the skin off the crew's hands as it zings out, and it will be a long, laborious process to get the sail up. Any boat with enough crew members will have the halyard already wrapped around a winch so that it can't possibly get away. As one crew member tails the winch, one or two others pull down on the halyard as it exits the mast. This is called "bouncing" the halyard. As long as the halyard is two-blocked before the spinnaker fills, a winch handle is not needed for even the largest spinnaker.

Once the sail is all the way up, the halyard should be secured firmly and the jib lowered immediately so the wind can get at the spinnaker and fill it.

Although most boats benefit from lowering the jib right away, there are some that sail faster under certain conditions with both jib and spinnaker set. Those boats with high-aspect ratio, non-overlapping jibs can often keep the jib flying with the spinnaker on a reach in moderate wind conditions. When the wind is heavy, the jib will tend to create more heeling force than desirable with a resulting tendency to broach. When the wind is light, flow over the jib will tend to suck the spinnaker in toward the jib, making it collapse more easily and fill with difficulty. If the jib on your boat resembles a spinnaker staysail, you may be able to fly it with the spinnaker. A spinnaker staysail is usually a high, narrow sail that trims to the center of the foredeck when the wind is abeam and toward the rail when the wind is aft. It may increase boat speed as much as two-tenths of a knot.

Reprinted from "Steve Colgate on Sailing."
By Steve Colgate, Published by W.W. Norton & Co.

Steve Colgate is the founder of Colgate Sailing Schools, with locations in Tortola BVI, Captiva Island FL, Duck Key FL, St. Petersburg FL, Chelsea Piers NY, Liberty Landing NJU and Newport RI.

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