One more point to consider - if you flake your spinnaker, it goes into a spinnaker bag easily with no pressure. This means no, or very little, pressure on the folds.

If you wad it up and stuff it into a spinnaker bag, the bag is constantly sprung and all the micro-folds try to push out. It results in stress on every bend and every fold.

I went through this with a expensive backpacking tent. Same thing, folding the same way does more damage than stuffing. If your worried about your chute being "sprung with micro-folds" then how about a slightly larger bag?? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Somebody just needs to come up with a injection molded spinnaker that would be wickedly cheaper. Then we could treat the sail exactly as it is, a flimsy disposable film somehow called cloth.

Mike,
Why do you flake paper? I was wondering why my receipts were folded so weird.
Tawd