Goodall Spinnaker

Finally got to give my 2003 Goodall spinnaker a try last weekend. I'm very happy with it. Much better than the series od several years back. A difference from day to night. or should I say night to day. She is well behaved, trims well, does not collapse just curl on the luff in a nice, slowmotion way so that you can pull on the sheet to keep the spi flying well. She fills nicely and doesn't fill with a bang at least not in the winds we were sailing in.

We had to move the mast gate to the maximum F16 allowed height as Goodall gives the spi a long luff these days. That and even lower the spi pole a bit more. It is definately a long luffed sail. Sheet loads were very mild but than again we only encounter some 2-3 force winds. The load did not really chance with the fullness of the luff; something that I did experience with other spis over several years back. The sheet loads remain constant while effectively adjusting the draft.

I made a mistake at running the retrieval line through the patches so I can't really comment on how the patch on the foot of the sail works. It is supposed to help retrieving easier. I can tell you that running the line through the patches teh wrong way really doesn't help.

The tiller loads are non-existant. My skipper was actually quite impressed to not feel any leehelm under spi. He dropped the tiller for 10 seconds to proof it. The boat just tracked under spi. I did not feel any significant weather helm when I steered the boat upwind on several occasions. The setup of the baot was pretty much neutral both up and down. Similar comments are expressed by the other parties working on and with F16 spis. The modern cut spi's, rather flat especially in the case of the F16's, seems to leave teh helm trim of the boats (largely) unaffected. In light wind no shift is noticed as we experienced as well. The older spi we had did produce a shift.

We did 2 races. We did very well in the first race finishing 6th out of 10 F18's with the 2nd place F18 being only 42 seconds ahead after 75 minutes of sailing. When the F18 (+similar boats) and F20 (+similar boats) fleets are combined into a 20 boat fleet we ended up at place 7 out of 20 boats with only 1 out of 10 F20's ahead of us by 90 seconds. (On handicap).

The second race we stuck to the port side of the course that had service us so well in race 1 when clearly the starboard became more and more favoured. We placed 18th out of 20 in that race. We were not alone as 2 I-20's and an A-cat finished minutes ahead of us after almost 2 hours of sailing. This score will hopefully be our strike-out.

The races on the first sunday of april were cancelled due to high winds. In this spring Cup (8 races on 4 sundays in April) we still have 4 races left and tomorrow looks like being a good day with windforce 4 winds. Just right for the Taipan and our weight.

Together we sail the Taipan at 165 kg = 365 lbs, which limits our topspeed in heavy winds and seastate a bit. Windforce 4 (just double trapezing) and flattish water would be perfect for us.

We must really mind the windmill park next to the race course this time. We were right in the first race that there would be a area of less wind behind the windmills. However de wind shifted about 30 degrees in the second race creating a canal of stronger wind right next to the windmills (of wind trying to go around the windmills) that allowed the boats there to power up to the marks. Lesson ? Don't be stubborn when everybody moves away to teh starboard side of the course after rounding the C-mark for the first time.

Tomorrow another day, This time with a new snuffersystem that we except alot of.

Wouter

have fun

Wouter

Wouter, how much rake are you using?

Wouter, that's fantastic info. What are you getting the information off?

We're using a Garmen Geko 201 Handheld GPS unit that can record up to 10.000 trackpoints. We are very happy with this unit. It's fastest record setting is 1 point/sec which is more than enough to show each mistake in great detail. Even in Eu without WAAS or other augmantation systems we get between 5 and 7 mtr accuracy. This accuracy denotes a swing in location coordinates over a longer time span. It pretty much means that the given location is accurate to that distance when passing that location multiple times over the course of say an hours and several hours. In short, we are recording our manouvres like tacks and gibes with much higher accuracy as those manouvres only take seconds to complete.

We are looking at using the 1 point per 3 seconds settingor maybe even 1 point per 5 seconds. 10.000 trackpoints allows us then a record time of 8 hours 20 min or 13 hours and 53 min. Long enough for any race day.

We use gartrip 2.0 free GPS software for mapping the route, colouring the tracks and show the speed tables.

We have to fiddle a bit with the logs (my college Geerts does that) to get it too work but that is mostly because we are evaluating the software. When we pay for a license we won't have to do that anymore.

The numbers are added by us using paint shop pro using to make the picture more understandable. When using Gartrip than you play your track like a movie at various speeds and see what actually happens. You can't do that with stills of course hences the numbers.

Both Geert and I have these Garmin Geko's (140 US$) and are looking to use them simultaniously to compare how we did and were we can improof.

We are looking to use them in the Dutch Coast Challenge as well, during a speed trail or something.

I hope this helps.

Google for the keywords : Garmin Geko 201 and Gartrip software to find more info.

Wouter

Wind were between 6 and 10 knots, Never more than 10 and only for brief periods of time.

It seems that later on in the race we managed to sail faster than the wind under the spinnaker. But only slightly faster.

I think saying we sailed at windspeed is a pretty safe way of looking at it. We're quite happy with that.

Wouter