Spinnaker Colour Help

Looking at getting a new spinnaker made and am tossing up a few ideas.......

So which style do you prefer.

We may have another sponnsor soon who's colours are light green, dark blue and gold..... Hence these colours used in 2 of these designs. If they do not come on board then it will open the choice up a lot more.

I am currently leaning towards FIVE

Stick to two colors.

What's the down-side to a clear spinnaker? Seems like it would be a little safer, especially coming into gates.

Trim, cost and lifespan I guess.

Harder to trim, price will be higher as the materials are a bit pricy (as far as I can tell), and it will break down faster (in my opinion). Cloth weight will probably also be higher, but I dont know that.

Upside is visibility and cat spi shapes can actually benefit from a somewhat stiffer cloth.

I'm with you, Pete. Clear would be a lot safer for visibility -- and not just at marks.

When purchasing our chute, we were advised to keep the outer panels lighter coloured. This to make it a. easier to see the telltales and b.easier to see chute trim at night

No such thing as transparent chute material, at least from Challenge, and not in the neato-nifty whoopee Hot Damn latest silicone coated stuff. You don't even have that many choices of colours...

What is this then? They have come up with window materials for spis, so I guess it is made from this material.

that makes me think of Wonder Woman and her invisible jet.

The transparent cloth may be only offered in Europe, or offered by another cloth mfg.

We JUST bought our chute from Smyth (Sept.) and at the time, transparent was not one of the offerings. Our chute cloth is the silicon coated by Challenge Sailcloth.

That said, I think the transparent would suck for an entire chute if you were sailing at night, trimming would be a bitch. But for the bottom panels, sure, why not?

Who makes the transparent cloth? What's its characteristics? What do SAILMAKERS think of it?

Contact Ullman Scicily and check with Pablo. Like I said, I suspect that the 'invisible chute' is made of window material, but who knows. Surely not a woven cloth, but some kind of laminate. I dont know more about that spi. I guess there is a reason Pablo dont have more information about it on his webpage.


http://www.ullmangz.it/ENG/Contactus.asp

Do you know wether Smyth have an operational webpage for his company?

PS: You should have your keyboard checked, your shift key seem to get stuck now and then.

The clear material in the kite made by Pablo is actually the laminate from car windscreens! it is supplied as a film and is easy to work with.

But it does go milky pretty quickly from all the scrunching up and being shoved into a snuffer. So it is not a good option.

As a side bit of info, the strongest colour is Blue and the weakest colours are the flouro ones followed by White and then green and red. This is due to the dye process and how it reacts with the material.

Also the most popular material in the Tornado class is Contender SK75 as it is very stable and pretty light.

SK80 is a very good option for cats as it is stronger in the warp axis than SK75 but it is not allowed in the F18 rules currently so that is a no go.... I would love to get my new kite made from SK80 <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Welll Macca (Andrew) then you'll just have to switch to the F16's where SK80 IS allowed !


Sorry guys I just couldn't resist.

Wouter

I like style number one. My reacher is made of Pentex. Smoke and white. I am going on 5 years with it and a little stretch, but no problems.

Doug

Marcus has been kind enough to lend us the Blade F18 for the worlds, so when thats over and they start building the F16 Blade in Aust then maybe I will have to get my hands on one of them <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

That is kind of him, isn't it ?

Any first impressions ?


Wouter

I vote for number 3.

Bob

I dont want to hijack Steve's kite colour thread but in answer to your question, the Blade seems very bloody good from our first 5 or so sails on the boat. We have only really sailed one day of races and another day of straight line testing with some Capricorns and we are very happy with the performance at this early stage. We still have a lot of little things to sort out before the worlds start but we are very happy so far.

Stephen,

I would choose neither of the proposed colour schemes. I think the "stars" look very much 70's like.

I would suggest that you keep the main body of the spinnaker one colour and just have the leading egde coloured differently. This looks alot more modern and fast.

Follow this link for an example with only 2 colours.

Two coloured leading edge spi

And here an example with 3 colours.





Maybe Gold (first row panels), light blue (second row panels) and dark blue (rest of spi) will work well.

Or maybe Gold, ligh green, dark blue with a nice golden sponsor log in the dark blue main body of the spi ?


Wouter

Wouter:

Yea I have a nice red, white and blue spinnaker. Can't wait to lean it next season when it gets warm. Have a safe and Happy New Year.

Doug and Ashleigh

Stephen,

Go purple, you know it makes sense !

Purple is the new Pink <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Thanks, Rolf:

I have the brand name confused, now I think about it... my chute cloth is CONTENDER!, after all. (It's been a bad week.) It's Contender Dynalite 75 Silicone. Slicker than owl sh!t, that stuff is. We had to get some special fancy teltales just so they'd stick to the cloth ;-)

BTW, the keyboard isn't messed up, I was attempting capitalization for emphasis' sake.

Smyth hasn't a page up that I know of, but his business email is SmythSails@gnt.net

We certainly are pleased with the sails and the service... the laundry wasn't perfect out the box, but what wasn't perfect has been made aright, quickly.

Husband is looking over my shoulder, and saw your pic. He is asserting that the chute in your pic may well be the plain white, labeled 'natural' in the color sample set I have. He thinks it would be pretty transparent at least in the single-layer parts...

I note that our photo is way off-colour, as the colours are flourescent blue, flourescent pink, flourescent green (chartreuse) and grey.

Wout, what's wrong with the 70s? ;-)

I guess I'm Old Skool--see my avatar

The Purple is my favorite colour, however Stevie Brewin is currently running purple on his Capricorn. That combined with very simular jibs and mains, the 2 boats will look to close.

Stephen,




<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />But you guys are so far apart on the race course that it still won't matter ! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Wouter

Very good Wouter..... I am the boat with the white kite directly to the right of him crossing on port.

Why not check out the video footage this was taken from here - http://www.formula18alive.com/06%20F18%20Nationals.wmv

Huh !


<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Stevie is then sailing much faster then I thought he would ! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Apparently A-cat sailors like Stevie do know how to sail a catamaran ! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />


Wouter

Anyone other the Stephen biting ?

Personally, I like the unique patterns that some of the sailors have come up with so you see them on the water and go "There's Ding!". We drew up this spinnaker pattern for the Tybee this year and it's really striking when seen from a distance. There's no doubt that you're seeing Team Seacats on the horizon with this one. The one drawback, however, is that it certainly doesn't lend itself to applying sponsor logos to the spinnaker.

how about this?

Sharp!

Very Sharp.......

I like, cheers

I second that...I like that one better.

I thought everyone knew that the blue cloth was faster.

So if I paint my hull orange and have blue sails I will beat any boat on the water.... right?

especially any boat that is green/orange or garnet/gold

<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />