A friend of mine used to race maxis and spent several years as skipper
of Condor. He told me once that they got a lot of lift off the top of
spinnaker which helped keep the bow up when going down wind in heavy
weather. He said that without the spinnaker, the maxis would tend to
bury their bow.
I always thought they were nuts to fly spinnakers in 30 or 40 knots but
what he said makes sense.
Cheers, Paul
On 19/10/2012 2:21 p.m., bjarthur123 wrote:
> but then it occurred to me this morning that proas, harry proas at
> least, don't deploy a spinnaker off the wind. (do russell brown's?)
> same sail area upwind as down then, unless it's light enough you can
> shake out a reef down wind. so if the overall sail plan is sized for
> close hauled work, then the lighter apparent wind on a broad reach
> means you're going to be underpowered. and so you don't need the extra
> righting moment, because you're not going to pitch pole anyway.
>
> i imagine a really hard-core racer would want that spinnaker though...
>
> ben