Symmetrical Spinnakers

Originally posted by NickA Except in the matter of ease of use  (and faster launch speed for really big ones), is anyone claiming that asymetrics are in any way "better" than symetrics?  In what way?

Asymmetrics tend to have a lower centre of pressure - the pole end is usually much lower - and have a longer luff. That means you can have more area for the same heeling moment and a higher aspect ratio which should give you more thrust per unit area. So it's win-win on a reach.

That said, I haven't noticed a great advantage in practice on tighter reaches, perhaps not least because people tend to put such huge asymmetric kites on in order to boost performance on pure leeward courses, that the boats don't balance as well as they might.

Glad to see that even the sailing anarchy folk were amazed by the forestay free gybe.  Shan't be trying it on my boats - the mast tends to fall down!

Originally posted by redback Let's face it the symetrical kite does not increase the speed much unless you sail high enough that the pole has to be against the forestay.  So you might as well use an asymetric and sail a boat which is optimised for one.

There is no doubt an assymmetric is faster on a reach, but why not try goose-swinging on the runs for max VMG? I've found this works very well in a comet trio, ( http://fotoboat.thirdlight.com/viewpicture.tlx?pictureid=323 4690&offset=33 ) and was pretty impressive in a laser sb3 - although we only managed to set it correctly once and were towing the helm at the time so didn't quite reach the usual mach 3 - but it showed potential.

The 16 Foot Skiffs, by the way, used the detachable-forestay jibe like the maxis in the SA link above, when they had old-style single-luff flat-cut assys hanging off a conventional pole.

Assys are definitely faster square running in boats that are fast enough to get the apparent forward, in part because you avoid the problem of the excess leach curve in a symmetrical kite on a reach. The handling benefits are obvious to anyone who used a conventional pole on an old-style 18.

Originally posted by Rupert Originally posted by jerry_c_384 There is no doubt an assymmetric is faster on a reach, but why not try goose-swinging on the runs for max VMG? I've found this works very well in a comet trio, ( http://fotoboat.thirdlight.com/viewpicture.tlx?pictureid=323 4690&offset=33 ) and was pretty impressive in a laser sb3 - although we only managed to set it correctly once and were towing the helm at the time so didn't quite reach the usual mach 3 - but it showed potential. Goosewinging I've found works in the slower end of the asymmetric market, in boats which would have gone faster with an old fashioned kite, such as the Trio and Laser 2000. Does the RS200 work well dead downwind with its retractable pole, or was that given up on? Faster boats, actually designed for asymmetric spinnakers, don't fare so well goosewinging. It generally is something to be tried on a small lake in dispair when the race officer has set YET ANOTHER dead run in almost no wind!

We had an RS200 for 3 years and the boat was much faster goosewinged in the light stuff but at the time this was banned for the big circuit events as the assy mode gave more tactical downwind racing.

We won the Grafam Assy Shoot-out in the 200 in light winds because of this - beat a few Cherubs over the water as well ...

Rick