A quote from another sailor.....

There were some benefits, but there were also some drawbacks to having the snuffer. The two main benifit was that I could pretty much drop the spinnaker on either tack without any major hassles and the tramp was less crowded without the spinnaker bag. The two drawbacks were that it was pretty hard on the spinnaker cloth when you pulled it back in and most cases we were slower on our takedown.

I have pretty much refined my takedown procedure to an art. I can get the spinnaker down and packed in the tramp bag in around 45-60 seconds, but the more important fact is that I go from a "trimmed" spinnaker to having it on the tramp in about 10 seconds. This means we can leave the spinnaker up and trimmed until were only a few boat lengths from the leeward mark. I will drop the spinnaker and as soon as it is on the tramp we will jibe and start heading upwind while I finish packing it in the bag. This allows us to keep our boat speed longer without slowing down while I reel the spinnaker into the snuffer. The snuffer also takes about 45-60 seconds to douse the spinnaker, but during that time you have to be headed down wind and really cannot jibe and start upwind again, that means you have to start the douse several boat lengths farther away from the mark.