[quote=mattson]I finally got conditions (coinciding with free time) to run the spinnaker yesterday. Lots of fun, but lots of stuff to work out and tune.
Backtracking a bit, I did run the dyneema bail line into the mast track as suggested. I used a depth gauge to make sure I hit the extreme back of the track as to not interfere with the sail bolt rope. Unfortunately, this location drilled into the interior of the mast. I basically now have four holes into the interior, two on the sides of the mast and two inside of the track, the later being very difficult to seal. Also, with the dyneema moving, I doubt the holes in the sides of the mast will remain sealed. This was very disappointing as during a past repair, I had to drill out a rivet and heard a "whoosh" when I did so. This mast WAS completely sealed before.
I'm thinking of removing the line, injecting some very thick epoxy on each side to seal both the exterior and interior holes, then install a conventional metal type bail.
When I originally hoisted the spinnaker, it appeared way too large, as I could not get the luff straight. Just looking at some photos and video revealed this to be normal. I also compared to a friends P19 spin and the luff lengths are identical. The last spinnaker I trimmed as crew on a beach cat has a way straighter luff, so it was probably a hooter.
I ran the sheet through a rachtamatic block at the rear cross bar. Looking at the shape, I think it may need to come forward. One implication here is that the spinnaker pole is 13' 8" long. This may be too long as I think I had read the standard on a Nac 20 is 12 ft.
It also looks like I need a swivel at the head. After the third hoist yesterday, I had about 2 ft of sail twisted at the head with no way to deal with it.
Other finer points to work out in the way of the tack line and halyard. But otherwise a joy to run that sail last night! Lost track of time and pulled in to the dock at 7:30pm.[/quote]
No HTML tags allowed (except inside [code][/code] tags)
