Q1 : Having the spinnaker on the lee side of the boat (relative to centreline) really cuts down on the leehelm that you get. Placing it more to windward (relative to the centreline) will therefor increase leehelm. In short, you may well upset the balancing act in forces on the rudders.

Additionally the flow on the luff side of the spi needs to clear the jib/mast/mainsail. By placing the spi more to windward you are closing off this slot. We all know that a jib that is too small will backwind the mainsail and make the baot feel bound up and slow.

Also it is too cumbersome and costly for too little gain.

Q2 : Benefits are to small on a bouy race course and the adding of a spinnaker negates much of the need to rake your mast forward or straight up for optimal performance. In short to cumbersome and costly for too little gain.


There is one golden rule on spinnaker boats : Simpler is faster !

On spi boats systems must be simple and work very well otherwise the gains are fully negated and you are better off without them.

System to gybe the spi pole and rerake the mast while sailing do not satisfy these criteria.

Greg goodall ones told me that during training for the F18 worlds in 2004 they found that each second of delay in setting and powering up the kite they would lose 10 mtr distance relative to the other boats. How many seconds do you need to rerake the mast and gybe the pole to windward at each gybe ? Do you think that the extra boatspeed is large enough to overcome these initial losses of about 100 to 200 meters ?

Wouter