We spent probably about 40% of last year's 523 mile Tybee 500 running as high and tight as possible with the spinnaker. I will attest that the loads are quite high - most of the crews hands (including mine) really paid the price. The truely grueling fact was that the spinnaker was adding a lot of drag for the power it generated - we were getting about an extra .2 knots out of it for all the work going into it...but we were racing!
Jake,
Did you run a doubler on the spin sheet to ease the loads. We've found this really helps on crew fatigue when carrying the kite high on distance races. We tied a pigtail to the clew of the kite with a carbo block on it and tied a stopper knot in the end of the spin sheet. When you want to deploy the doubler you draw the stopper knot back from the pulley to a hook attached to the shroud adjuster (or on top of your spinnaker turning block on the hull).
Chris.
