Platu 25: The Spinnaker pole

Initially I have wanted to write this post together with the post on Spinnaker Hoisting, but I decided not to, to avoid the post being too long, and also I want this post to focus on the setting of the spinnaker pole.

While I was in Thailand Platu open, I notice some of the platu boats have a very creative way of storing/ setting up the spinnaker pole. Their system are very similar to those use in a Laser2, where they store/launch the pole from the boom. So imagine this the pole stored beside the boom with the topping lift and also the down haul still attach. I see this as a, another way to take some strain of the bowman. With the pole now located on the boom, bowman will not be the nearest to it anymore, will the Pitman help?, or the pole is meant to sprung out of the boom by itself when the topping lift and down haul, are pulled, but both of the topping lift and down hauls are loose in the first place to put the pole beside the boom, so does that mean 2 lines have to be pulled? either ways this gives us an interesting thoughts to ponder. My first thought, this system could end up creating more work than the standard system, maybe not for the bowman, perhaps for the pitman.

I also notice that most of the platu boats have a fixed down haul. I can understand this given the design of the boat, but its still a big no no to me.

Why not a fixed down haul and also on why I understand them having the down haul fixed.
If you have sailed a few one design boat before you will notice not all have the same system. In a platu, the topping lift, the down haul, the spinnaker pole are set/hoist outside the front sail. While on some other boat ( lets call it boat B) the, the topping lift, the down haul, the spinnaker pole is set/hoist in between the 2 front sail sheet.

Lets imagine a scene, a typical one , windward mark port rounding, bear a way set, downwind, a jibe, a windward drop, and then to leeward mark port rounding.

With the above scene, Boat B would have change the down haul before the drop, so that the front sail is clear to be hoist. For more elaboration, after we hoist the spin, we drop the front sail on the port side, after a jibe, we will need the front sail to be hoist on starboard side en route to a port rounding, to do that, we will realize that the down haul is in the way, therefore we will need to un-clip the down haul, move the front sail to start board side and clip the down haul back, now the front sail is clear to be hoist. During the drop , we can hoist the front sail first, then drop the pole and drop the spinnaker.

On a platu if we did it the exact way on a boat B, we will find the topping lift inside the front sail, which is wrong.

So in a platu we normally do not change the down haul, instead during the drop we utilize a crew to act as a man pole, while we lower the pole 1st before hoisting the front sail, and dropping the spinnaker. This very much justify the fixed down haul, but in racing shits happens, in times we may be under pressure by another boat, and we will find the down haul getting in to our way at times, so in times, in those time we may find the needs un clip the down haul.

But sometimes, I do use the boat B way, on a platu; especially when we are under crew and do not have a Man pole. How do i deal with the topping lift inside the front sail? I un-clip it, and bring it outside during upwind, you may think tacking after mark rounding may be a problem before i sort out the topping lift, I overcome this by making sure the topping lift have enough slack and not lock, therefore when the boat tack, the front sail will be able to change side without the interference of the topping lift. It will just drag the slack of the topping lift aside.

Sean