I'll need to give your comment about a Hobie 16 "not being faster downwind with a spinnaker, but yeilding a better downwind angle", some thought, as initially it doesn't make sense to me. i.e. If you just point a Hobie 16 deeper downwind, it goes slower. So how is the downwind angle better with a spinnaker. What is better about it if its not any faster?
(I think Pete was quoting a comment made by a teenager who competed in US Sailing's Youth Multihull National Championship on Hobie 16's with spinnakers.)
Kathryn, thank you for saying that it doesn't make sense, because it didn't make sense to me, either, because I didn't understand what they meant by "BETTER angle." Higher angle or lower angle? And what did they mean by "FASTER"? Did they mean faster in terms of actual speed or faster getting to the leeward mark? (Those are rhetorical questions, by the way, since we don't have the teen here to interrogate in person.)
Many years ago we did a Corsair seminar, and some of the boats had symmetrical spinnakers and sailed straight downwind. Some of them had asymmetrical spinnakers and tacked downwind. It seemed to average out pretty even at the leeward mark, depending on the wind. But the boats that tacked downwind had more fun because they were going faster, even though they didn't always get to their destination faster.
