by David Hill » Thu Jun 25, 2009 12:08 pm
Hi Simon,
if SBII was on this board maybe he could confirm, but I got the impression he was using the genoa halyard to hoist the kite, and a simple pole out to keep control. I didn't notice/see any special rigging for it, but I could be wrong. With low loads I imagine this system works well enough, so it wouldn't be too hard to retro fit kites to all capecutters.
My pole for the genoa is basically the longest spinnaker pole I could find for a dinghy class! I hadn't got around to putting a ring on the mast, so t was merely clipped to the main halyard on starboard, the genoa halyard on port - not ideal but worked OK in the wind strengths we had.
While talking of sails, another interesting aspect was using the jib with the genoa. We didn't, while SB11 did. We did try for a few miles during the first leg, but we felt there was no increase in boat speed, and slightly more hassle on tacking so we quickly dropped it. SBII also decided to drop the jib for the last few miles before the finish (as I said, we were so close together after 11 hours racing it was ridiculous!), so I guess they decided it wasn't helping.
I'd be interested to hear other people's view on whether they work well together.
Cheers!
David