a true kite is a great idea. and the outleader is made by kiteship, whose president is dave culp, a regular contributor to proafile. i knew about them already, but thanks for the reminder. will definitely have to read up on it.
re. a regular spinnaker... i've seen heated discussions on other forums about whether they really lift the bows. i have trouble believing that they do, but there are many who are convinced of it. what do the people here make of it?
ben
--- In harryproa@yahoogroups.com.au, Mike Crawford <mcrawf@...> wrote:
>
>
> If you really want to go wild with sail area downwind, while
> generating upward lift instead of adding to pitchpoling moment, consider
> an outleader kite.
>
> Some say they're even easier to handle than spinnakers, you get a
> honking amount of sail area, and most importantly, they are easily
> depowered. And if you have the kite treated with SailKote, it will
> completely shed water and pop back up even when dunked.
>
> I'm not sure you could find a safer or easier way to get a massive
> increase in downwind sail area on a proa with an unstayed mast. Perhaps
> this could eliminate some worries about pitchpoling, especially because
> the upward lift will likely be more effective than any weight you could
> manage to move aft (depends upon where you anchor the kite, of course).
>
> That said, I'm not sure I'm interested in seeing how quickly I can
> plow through waves downwind, even with an upward lift component. As Ben
> mentions, sometimes it's nice to just fly a reasonable amount of sail
> and let the boat slice through the sea as designed.
>
> But I'm not a racer looking for speed at all costs. I get how
> important that is if racing is your goal.
>
> - Mike
>
>
> Paul Wilson wrote:
> >
> >
> > 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