What type of dry suit do you guys use? I am going to need to purchase one soon.
Probably need to wear it during the summer
sailing in Mich and in the winter sailing down here!
If anyone needs to crew for any of the winter races
let me know and I can fly in for a race. Would love
to take my own boat down but doesn't make a huge
amount of sense flying into Pensacola only to drive
10hrs south! Robi gets first dibs on my awesome
skills though since he crewed for me once.
<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Yeah, that is they day I decided to throw in the towel. I was shivering on the boat, it was blowing tits not much fun at that point.

Mine is a Kokatat, I bought on sale last year ... then sent to Kokatat to put in a "relief zipper".

do a search on the forums as this was discussed pretty heavily last fall.

Here is a site that has a bunch of different models to begin your evaluation:

Outdoor Play Website

And another site with used suits:

Used Dry Suits

I hear more often that bouy race courses in the US are so short.

Why is that ?

"3 laps and finishing in 20 minutes" is a course that is MUCH too small for a spinnaker boat and it will favour non-spi boats like the H16's and A's enormously. This is hardly fair when racing on handicap.

By comparison. We race on average 45 minute races with 2 or 3 laps. Distance from start to A-mark is at least a nautical mile. On this course you can really stretch your legs under the spinnaker and do some tactical sailing. But even then the downwind leg lasts only about 5 to 6 minutes.

Wouter

The length of this course was not typical, just a logistics issue with the wind direction. The wind was blowing straight across the short dirrection of the bay. The course was set as far as it would allow without just setting it perpendicular to the wind and having a reach fest. The A mark was up under a large row of big condos and C was down against the sea wall any longer course and we would have been doing land tacks. Typical races schedule out around the 45 minutes with larger events being a little closer to 1 hr.

When I lived in the Midwest, I used to hear about how the courses there were too short to allow spins to be used. I used to think this was true until I moved to FL and found out the courses all were about the same size. If we could effectively run spins on that day in Gulfport, with incredibly short gusty, switchy legs, they could be used anywhere.

M

Arrggghhhh!!! That, and spin setup time! What to do, what to do...<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Just ignore the sceptics and go for it. Once you have a season with the spi under your belt you'll never look back. Actually will only be looking FORWARD till the next time you can set that large head sail again !

Wouter

It is 10 min more if I hurry and 15 if I am being social tops. The difference in fun sailing down wind is more than worth every minute of extra set up.

I think I'm going to try something new with respect to the spinnaker.

I'm thinking about keeping the spi in the snuffer permanently. So I'm considering making a cover bag for my snuffer ring and bag in order to keep the rain and sand out. The spi sheet then stays permanently attached to the clew corner by one of its ends. The loose end I intend to pull through the blocks followed by pushing the bundled spi sheet into the snuffer bag before covering it up. The spi halyard is easily enough undone and fitted to not add much rigging time.

When trailering the boat (in my case seldomly) I intend to just pull the retrieval/halyard line out of the mast blocks and store it in the snuffer bag just as the spi sheet. When assembling the boat it is easy enough to lay the boat flat and rerun the halyard line. Or one can rerun the halyard line before raising the mast.

I think this way the rigging of the spinnaker will end up being a 2 minute job and it can not foul up.

I have already done it this way ones but without the covering bag. Had to pick out some leaves from the snuffer bag that time.

Wouter

And we can easily spend 45 minutes to an hour "fiddling" with our 20's!
Too bad Florida and "back home" are so far apart.
Hey, why not take a month off and hit the Div 7 champsionships, NCAC's and Mid-America's with a Blade or two? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />