I have only been using a spinnaker with my cat for about 6 months and feel like a complete novice. It seems like every time I go out, I figure out (the hard way) what to do, or not to do. I would love to learn some of your "Do's & Don'ts".

Here are a few random ones of mine. I have a Nacra F18 with a front snuffer, so that is my perspective. Obviously, different boats or snuffer systems will have different issues.
1. When dousing the spinnaker, if I sail close to straight downwind, I almost always run over the spin sheets with the windward hull. It is really a pain to clear the lines after that. I need to be a little upwind when dousing to avoid this.
2. Rather than trying to see if the spinnaker is raised up to the proper height, I have marked my halyard so I can easily see. Because my halyard is blue, a marker would not work. Instead,I just used a needle to thread a couple pieces of sail repair thread through and tied them off. I can easily see the thread and they do not interfere with the pulleys.
3. When solo sailing and using the spinnaker, its hard to give your forward hand a rest. I have found that I can free up my forward hand for a rest or other needs by positioning the tiller extension a certain way. I put the tiller extension behind my back and hook onto it with the inside of my rear elbow. With this arrangement, I can very effectively steer by simply twisting my upper body. My rear hand can hold the spin sheet, giving my front hand a rest. Try this if your are solo sailing...it works.
4. Apparently, it is important to use your mainsheet as a backstay when sailing with a spinnaker. I think this is an important matter that should be more widely publicied than it is. I understand that its possible to damage your mast if you ignore this issue.

Here are some questions I have:
Can you trapeze when solo sailing a spinnaker? This is something I have not tried. I have trouble seeing how to secure myself to the boat during this point of sail while hanging onto the tiller extension and spin sheet only, especially with course changes necessary to react to the gusts.

How do you avoid snagging your spin when dousing? I seem to get a high percentage of snags on something during snuffing. By this, I mean not only the hull running over the sheet, but also internal snags in the sock, etc.

How do you tell if your halyard is too loose or too tight?

What's the best way to jibe a spin? There has got to be a better system than mine.

Steve

First one; Don't sail dead down wind when dousing the kite, try and sail a little hight, also; stand on the sheet as you trip the halyard so that the sheets don't fly forward - I sail my 17 with the kite and have added cleats to do this (also allows me free hands to do other jobs too)

Forward hand rest; difficult one, I sometimes move the sheet to my aft hand for a short time.

V important to keep mainsheet tension and let the Downhaul off.

Trapping with the kite up is a scream (and makes good VMG most of the time too); Get back into the foot loop(if windy enough) and go for it !

When you say you are snagging, is this on the kite front ect - this may be cured by keeping some sheet tension on ect; of the kite in snagging on sharp edges then you just need to go over the boat very carefully and remove them all.

As for the hoist height; pull it as high as you can for a full shape; let it off a little to flatten it !

Gybing well is very dufficult on your own;

My method is to :

1, iniatiate the bear off as I come in off the wire
2, ease the sheet a little as I do
3, grab the new sheet on the tramp and try and keep the old to hand and tidyup any loose
4, main goes over and I sheet in PDQ on the new sheet dropping the old - with a bit of luck the kite pops around the front, and you sheet in (steering as well) and off you go
5, ,Hull comes up and out on the wire...

in theory

Scooby got it right.

When snuffing, do so with speed and heat in the spinnaker. Running over the sheets or having them twist around the end of the pole is common if you are snuffing while heading dead downwind. Secondly, hold a little tension on the dousing line (belly chord) just prior to releasing the halyard - this helps to reduce the power in the spinnaker immediately after releasing the halyard by getting it to fold immediately.

With regards to the snags - I think you'll find that the spinnaker snuffs much easier when snuffed from a proper sailing angle. You probably only have two snuffer points - but you might be able to put a stopper ball between the two collection points to separate them slightly. I have a mid-pole system but I put a stopper ball about 16" between the mid patch and the top patch in the spinnaker just to keep the whole bunch from trying to enter the snuffer at the same time. You only need to make sure that you can snuff the entire spinnaker with the extra length added by the stopper.

We set our halyard / luff tension so that when fully hoisted and with little wind, you can grab the luff of the spinnaker with a full fist (vertically) and rotate your closed fist containing the sail luff to horizontal to make the luff tight. We set stopper balls on the halyard and/or tack line so that this setting is easy to achieve blindly when hoisting.

Any suggestions on articles for spinnaker use?

I am itching to use mine but I will be solo for the rest of the season.

I generally go out in light to medium winds.

Scooby Simon,
Thanks for your very helpful response. A few questions for you:
1. Do you sometimes solo sail the spin from the trap? If so, it seems like the rear footstrap alone would not be enough to stabilize you while pulling in and out on the spin sheet and turning the boat to keep it from flipping. Enlighten me.
2. When you mention adding cleats, do you mean that you have replaced your nearest spin pulley with one that can cleat? Or did you place the cleats elsewhere, like on your trap harness or the side of boat?
3. Do you find that having spin cleats works well or do you have problems uncleating quickly or accidentally cleating?

Jake,
Thanks to you also, for your very informative response. Coupla questions for you too:
1. I am unfamiliar with the stopper balls you mention. Where does one buy these...West Marine? Do these somehow clamp onto the line and provide a stop, such as for the spin halyard?
2. I would love to rig my spin so it does not all come in at the same time. I think its a big reason for my snags, Howevery, I am confused by your description of the stopper ball placed between the 2 collection points. It may be because I use an end-pole system. Can you either elaborate on this setup, or attach a digital picture so I can see how this is done.

Thanks for all the help.

Steve

a, Yes depending on wind; size of course and how busy the course is (and how knackered I am) I wire downwind with the kite up.
b, I have 2 loops at the back of the boat:
but only usually use the front ones as my foot gets in the way of the rudder arm when my foot is in the back one. I have a very grippy/rough side to the boat so (usually) my feet don't slide around




I've rigged some on the front beam with a bit of rope from the becket on the top that I cleats/ties to the shrouds to keep them in a constant position s othat you can uncleat - Up set them up with upside down cleats. you can just see them on this picture :



follow this link for an even larger version.



Becasue od the position of the cleats and the angle I've set them up at it is difficult to cleat them by accident - they are set so you can just get them into the cleats from the wire when forward by the shrouds (i.e. the sheets are almost touching the shrouds when you pull them). The will almost always pull out if cleated; they are really used just to free up hands when doing other stuff around the boat; the cleats are also usefull for the first hoist as I can have the sheet cleated before the kite goes up and so be "a couple of arm fulls" ahead when sheeting in.

Steve,

The "stopper ball" is simply a little plastic ball with a hole in it. You run the dousing line through the spinnaker and before running it through the last attachment grommet (or ring) on the sail, run it through the stopper ball and tie a knot in the line...then attache the end to the sail. The stopper ball is a pretty common article (trying to attach picture). You can also use a Hobie-style trapeze stopper (the little black bow-tie looking thing) to accomplish the same thing.