Listers I am appealing to your collective wisdom on rigging and trimming an asymmetrical spinnaker.
For Grenadine’s 50th birthday this year, I added a new furling genoa on a new Selden 204S furler, a retractable Selden 75 bowsprit, and an A2 asymmetrical spinnaker on a Selden GX10 top-down furler. I’m installing the latter two birthday presents on Tuesday. This is all to improve my downwind performance, and facilitate fast upwind / downwind sail plan changes at the marks and on the course, in my club’s races. I guess my specific questions are as follows, but I would appreciate any additional tips you old salts might offer. 1. Leading the tack line - I’m repurposing the foredeck padeye and block, side-deck fairleads, and cabin-side cam cleat for my former pole down line to run the asym tack line, which of course goes through the bowsprit lengthwise. My pole down line is too short to be the asym tack line, so I’ve repurposed a little-used genoa sheet. I figure if the deck hardware was sufficient for a symmetrical pole down line, it ought to suffice for an asym tack line. Am I wrong? 2. Where to put the turning blocks for the asym sheets: same place as for the symmetrical, or farther forward? For the symmetrical turning blocks I use snatch blocks at the stern pulpit braces. 3. What winch to lead to / where to trim from? My main competitor leads his asym sheets to cabintop winches, and trims from the windward side deck so the trimmer can see the whole sail. 4. When and how much to ease the tack line? By default I assume it’s tensioned so that the aysm’s tack is at the bowsprit and the luff is taut, but it can be eased - how much, and under what conditions? Thanks in advance for any wisdom you mmight share. Fun fact: the sail is black, with a logo of an M67 grenade on both sides, because of the etymology of my boat’s name, and because of her color scheme (red topsides, white deck and cabintop, black canvas. Cheers, Randy Stafford SV Grenadine C&C 30 MK I #79 Ken Caryl, CO
