I always pull the spinnaker, but that is mostly because my boat tends to be more difficult to handle without a spinnaker in a blow.

However, I do believe there are conditions where it is best to race an F16 without a spi on the downwind legs.

This transition may be located at different conditions for different boats and different sailors.

Hans tends to decide to go without a spinnaker early, while I only do so at a very late stage.

Speed difference, the spinnaker is always faster downwind as long as you can handle it. The latter mostly means, not capsizing the boat. Of course no boat is as slow as the one that is upside down ! If you have to flog the spinnaker often (very large and violant shifts) then maybe it is not faster either.

At the GC the problems with the spinnaker were two fold. First the seastate. Hoisting and dropping the spinnaker when 1-up was very challenging because of the combination of large and fast waves (1.5 to 2 meter tall, length of a man) and strong winds. Basically you had only seconds to get it up and down before the waves would pick up your sterns, swing the boat around and put your mainsail perpendicular to the strong winds. This is the way I flipped it on monday.

On tuesday they was were less. Here I flipped the boat (and righted it unaided) 5 times in 2 races. 3 times under spinnaker on the same leg. The reason for this is relatively simple. Although I was physically strong, I'm the only one who managed to flip so many times and right the boat unaided to continue racing, I was mentally out of sinc. My converted Taipan is the most difficult to sail in strong gusty winds with large waves. I tend to accellerate coming off the wave and bury my bows deep in the next one. When that happens the boat experiences alot of weatherhelm and my AHPC rudders stall to easily leading often to a broach. When I'm sharp mentally then I'm able to make the right corrections early on in the proces and survive. On Tuesday I wasn't and after righting my boat several times I was losing more and more of my concentration and tipping it in more often as a result. with the spinnaker, the boat has slight lee helm and loads up the rudders much less when the bows burry. This is one reason why I always pull a spinnaker for downwind work no matter what the conditions are. The rudders made by Hans are much better and hardly ever stall, also the Blade hulls have much less resistance against baring off even when the bows burry.

I'm absolutely convinced that T-foil rudders and even slightly longer rudders (or a better profile) will work wonders on my boat. I haven't got the money to pay for these though.

Also, there is another thing to consider. In order to get to higher speeds under a spinnaker you need to be able to overtake the waves. The spinnaker can help you get up to speed to stay with a wave and possible provide extra power to stay with one. However, if the winds are strong enough to allow you to catch a wave under mainsail alone then the spinnaker boat is hardly pressed to make much time on the boat without a spinnaker. It is much harder to overtake a wave then to ride one all the way to the gate. You are still faster if you can and often you can but against what risk of capsizing ?

On Saterday it was clear how much faster a spinnaker can be, especially 1-up. The winds were slightly less and the waves were a little shorter. Now with the spinnaker you could overtake wave after wave after wave will none spinnaker boats stayed locked in. Even F18's with a relatively heavy crew will hard pressed to this end at the end of the race when the winds fell a little. I was able to keep doing this all the way to the finish. On the last half of the leg I think I put some 10 minutes on the John and Paul Alani who were right along side me when we rounded the last mark.

So it can go both waves ehhh ways.

Wouter