We rigged a P19 up with a pole this summer. Since the boat was old... he was using a Nacra Bridle foil to resist the bows towing in. He had lenghened his forestay to use the nacra bridle foil. The MX jib luff extended well below the original bridle wire intersection and was tacked onto the foil. Essentially duplicating the strut used on the Marstrom tornado to lower the jib tack. We rigged the pole below the foil, and tried to induce the proper amount of prebend into the spin pole using the bow bridles.... Oops.. the loads needed to bend the pole (at this angle)simply towed in the bows (despite the bow foil). The solution was the pelican striker that was used by Bill on the Supercat pole (below the strut). The pelican striker allowed us to prebend the pole the proper amount without transfering the loads to the bows. The bow bridle serves to keep the tip centered and slightly load the pole up.

The Tornado gets away without a pelican striker because the pole is carried quite a bit higher then we could on the P19. The class spec is that the jib tack cannot extend below 50 centimeters of the intersection of the bridle. Essentially this carries the pole at a fairly high angle and the Tornado bows can handle the loads.

If you are going to maximize your luff length by lowering the pole as much as you can... well you have to compensate somewhere.

Take Care
Mark