Spiros twins Osprey pics

Having sailed 505's up until 5 years ago, twin pole is the only way.  I then changed to the Osprey, I spoke to many various Osprey people including Mark H and also Tim Rush.  I went for the normal single pole, why? Well the Osprey has a much smaller kite then the 505 and also is slightly heavier so downwind you are not going anything like as deep and fast.  Gybes on the 505 - sweet, but the twin poles generally on the Osprey cause more problems that they solve.  I suggest you go onto the Osprey Face Book page and message Ben or Simon Hawkes - far nearer the front than me - who ran twin poles for about half a season and then took them off!  They can give you their experiences on the Osprey.  There are some big boys at the front of Ospreys, so don't worry about weight!  The normal pole system lets you gybe comfortably (?)  in really high winds, so is defo my choice and I believe the choice of most of the top end of the fleet.  505's tend to do windward leeward courses so go as low and fast as possible, Ospreys do Traingle/Sausage courses so demands are differant. Have fun.

I remember Fireballs ( last century!) having a mega extending tiller extension so the crew could steer from the wire and the helm could move forward pre windward mark to set the pole up.

Thanks for that...actually I have a couple of very different asymmetrics, as yet untried, but everything I read about Ospreys makes me think Proctor's original sailplan probably can't be beat.

Originally posted by Merlinboy Sorry to drag this old thread up again.  I am in the early stages of thinking about converting the 505 to twin carbon poles.

Edited by Bramble - 09 Feb 21 at 1:27am

Originally posted by Mikey 14778 It's one of those 'unwritten' rules. Basically the argument goes along the lines that the Fireball rules refer to 'the pole', which is in the singular and thus means one and only one. I pointed out that they also refer to 'the trapeze', but apparently that's different and we are allowed two of those (phew!). I would have been inclined to argue my point further, but I was debating this with the Fireball International Class Rules Bloke, so his opinion is clearly going to carry a bit more weight than mine. In fairness, I can see his point of view now it's been explained to me, but I still think it's a bit of a grey area. For the full explanation, see this post on the FI Forum Maybe I should look at what the Merlins get up to with single poles....

I fitted twin poles and a twin spiro to a Sandhopper (shoal draft Squibb) and it was brilliant, particularly when gybing. Personally, I don't like 'unwritten' rules. I did a load of research and found that virtually all classes use the singular 'pole' in their rules, including the Merlins and 505s. The 505 chairman of the technical committee told me that he had never found a need to change the wording to read 'pole or poles' or some such.

I don't think you can avoid using a purpose made fitting, loose blocks would be a nightmare. Incidentally, you don't need a shockcord return to retrieve the pole which means you are far less likely to suffer a pole in the mouth. Check out the Merlin Rockets, they have a micro block on the inner end and a high set line (or shockcord) at the mast down to the boom end that allows a much more controlled retrieval. That worked for me too.