Another question, spinnakers , alt/assym/sym

It's probably complete unfeasible, but has anyone tried a damgly pole style approach to spinnakers, I'm thinking as an alternative to a full on assym. Could not some form of spinnaker be fashioned that dead runs on a single hander. using a dangly style pole?

Right now I can't think why not, but no doubt the hive mind will find an obstacle.

Edited by iGRF - 14 Feb 18 at 5:05pm

Originally posted by fab100 IV]]How often do you think you'll sail in insufficient breeze to make it not worth heating up your Farr-on-steroids?

Farr to often, we sail triangle sausage and all to often one leg of the triangle won't support a kite, so conventional kite boats usually win out, Hornet, Merlin, we used to have to go some in the Alto and we used the swinging pole regularly.

But I was also thinking about small pond use and the benefits of a single handed sym kite solution.

As you know, it's quite a chore single handing an assym kite, so trying to semi automate a sym kite for single handed use would have to have something like this.

Having used both, sum briefly and assy pretty frequently I don't think I'd like to try a sym kit sailing solo. It's the poles that require two hands. I'm currently devising an assy system for the Blaze, it has to be removable and with no holes so it's tricky (at least the Farr allows the various gubbins to be built into the hull with no weight penalty). I'm using an Omega kite (circa 15M2) and currently trying to source a chute from a cat to fit to my short, fixed pole as my home made chute was not strong enough. Getting it up is not a problem but dousing it is more troublesome (ooh-er-missus) and I tried a bag system first which was pretty much impossible singlehanded.

Ultimately I think its a solution looking for a problem. The right fix for a small pond is no kite at all, because the losses hoisting and dropping a kite on short legs, plus the difficulties of rapidly and radically shifting winds mean there's no way it will do any good.

In a boat with any kind of performance the sprit kite is better since you can have a far larger rag for the same difficulty in handling, and angles with a big rag will always beat running with a pocket handkerchief. The thing about dead runs is that the diminishing returns factor of apparent wind from behind means extra rag will always have very limited benefit.

In the Cherubs we learned very very early that there were just about no conditions where a pole kite had any advantages.

Edited by JimC - 15 Feb 18 at 7:57am

KISS surely more suitable ?