Have any of you seen this before ?

I saw 'chutes' sewn into a Snipe mainsail in 1955. The sails were made by Southern Sailmakers. There was no performance gain with the chutes.
Bill

Thanks Bill.

I was just curious.

Yachting World magazine I believe a few months ago had a story about this new spinnaker design which incorporates a ram air parafoil in the center of the chute to provide inflational compression stabiity to the chute shape and also lift to counteract the forward pitching moment of the sail.

The German loft is now producing five a day for all varieties of racing boats so I expect they will start turning up all over the place. They have been highly effective up to fairly high wind force and on small as well as large boats.