Monday, January 16, 2012

Sailing with a Spinnaker, Sort of

The napkin! Er, I mean, spinnaker.

After a spine wrenching Saturday working on the dreaded toerail, Vlad and I took a much needed break and went for a sail with our dock neighbors. They had received a J-22 spinnaker and wanted to see what it would do on their Westerly.

This was a bit of an experiment for the following reasons. A spinnaker is a very light sail, used in light air, downwind sailing, and is typically quite large compared to the size of the boat. But the spinnaker for a 22-foot boat is evidently really small for a 37-foot boat, so when we popped it out there it looked like a napkin fluttering in the breeze.

Having never flown a spinnaker before, I thought this was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. It sounds like crepe paper, and you can fly it like a kite! And napkin or not, we got an extra 3/4 of a knot out of it. Needless to say, now I want one. Here's a few more pics from our sail in Galveston Bay:

Vlad at the helm.

Clouds over Galveston Bay.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, that's cool! I always wondered if it would be worth it to have sails from boats of a different size than ours. Frankly I have found our large spinnaker to be a pain in the hind end to put up, and then very delicate to keep it up in light wind. The little napkin looks much easier to me.

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    1. The folks we were sailing with, who have a ton of experience as racers, said it was very easy to handle in comparison to a full-sized spinnaker. It seems worth it to me, at least just to try. Plus, it's fun!

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