I'm trying to determine how long of spinnaker sheet I need. Help is appreciated. (c.f. attached drawing).
Distances measured: ---------------------- a) active clew to turning block = 8' b) turning block to ratchet = 10' c) ratchet to aft windward corner = 18' (14' + extra 4') d) windward corner to lazy ratchet = 12' e) lazy ratchet to lazy turn = 10' f) lazy turn to forestay = 17' g) forestay to clew (lazy) = 15'
spinnaker foot = 19' pole length = 16'
sections c & d are the loop sections between the two ratchet blocks [purple]. ------------------------
My question is, with a single sheet system like the one that I have drawn, do I need extra line in the loop section (c & d) besides what I have measured? If I used the line lengths measured and shown here, will there be enough sheet in the system to adequately ease the sail. As drawn, this sheet would measure 90'.
I can hypothesize a situation where the 19' foot of the sail extends straight perpendicular from the spinnaker pole tip to leeward. This would lengthen the span of section "a)" from 8' to 30' and would lengthen section "g)" from 15' to 36'. In this situation the continuous sheet would have to be 133' long.
If the spinnaker blew straight forward section "a)" would have to be 45' long and section "f) + g)" would also have to be 45 feet long. This would make a total spinnaker sheet length of 142' long.
In the last two cases the amount of unused sheet in the "loop" [sections c+d] would be pretty large: 30' in the shortest scenario, 73' in the second scenario, and 82' in the last scenario.
