Spinnaker Nets

[Eyrie]

Ahoy,

I've gotten a couple of emails inquiring about spinnaker nets, so I thought it would be of interest to the general shorthanded sailing community to share your experiences, both good and bad. (General, are you out there...? )

Also, the forum has been a bit quiet lately... (insert sleepy face)

Synthia

 

[Eric Thomas]

Hi Synthia,

Happy to talk sailing as it is snowing here on Polar Bear. The net was a godsend! I flew a full size symmetrical kite from morning till late at night each day in the trades. Wind was at 170 TWA so the wrap was always waiting to happen but prevented by the net. Mine has a luff tape and I never had trouble with tangles. Had I not Broken my pole toping lift I would have left it up all the time but short on halyards I had to first hoist the kite, dowse the headsail then hoist the net on the headsail halyard, next time I will likely keep it up all the time. Even in that short window of not having it up I nearly got into trouble.

Eric

 

[brianb]

Spin net

Hi Synthia,

Used one in the Pac Cup. Worked well until we broached and had a major mess with the spin wrapped with the net. However, in total it probably prevented more carnage then caused by the one tangle.

Ask me sometime about shrimping with a spin sock after blowing the halyard in the same incident.

Brian

 

[sleddog]

As POLAR BEAR recounts, spinny nets can be a valuable offshore tool. They are best employed when running deep and for the usual reasons: the AP burps and/or a wave throws the boat by the lee, causing the spinnaker to collapse in the lee of the main and then blow through the foretriangle, inside the headstay. This scenario generally turns ugly. If a spinnaker begins to wrap in this fashion, the best antidote is to either jibe ASAP. Or lower the spinnaker before the wrap becomes too tight.

Spinnaker nets are not an absolute guarantee that a wrap still won't occur. Two scenarios recently seen were (1) the spinnaker wraps the net inside, making a difficult wad that can only be untangled by lowering both the net and spinnaker simultaneously.

Or (2) the snuffer plastic cone at the masthead blows through the top of the net, becoming entrapped. This effectively puts the snuffer out of action.

As with all other aspects of sailing shorthanded with a spinnaker offshore, practicing well ahead of time rigging, hoisting, jibing, lowering and bagging a spinnaker net minimizes expensive complications, or having to resort to flares to burn the resulting nylon entanglement from the headstay.

~sleddog

 

[tiger beetle]

home-made spinnaker nets

Hi Synthia -

I've made up two spinnaker nets, one for the Newport 33, and a second one for the N/M 45. Both were constructed from 1" flat (singlebraid) nylon, the design is essentially a cross-cut no. 3 headsail with all the cloth removed and leaving only the nylon webbing where the seam lines would be. The forward tape acts as the luff, an aft tape acts as the leech, and lots of horizontal tapes is strung between the two as the horizontal seams. I used a home sewing machine to make the first one, and a Thompson walking foot machine (Sailrite) to make the second one - both machines worked fine as nylon webbing is easy to stitch through.

Use different colour tapes so you can distinguish between the luff, leach, and cross-bars in the net while huddled at the foot of the mast hooking the thing up in the dark under head lamp, and be really careful how it is folded and stowed; the tangle a net can get into if simply dumped out of a bag must be seen to be believed.

The complicating factor is the existence of furling gear on the headstay; the net has to somehow cling to the furled headsail and not allow a gap to open up between the headsail and the leading edge of the net through which the spinnaker can slip. In my case I made the horizontal net elements long enough to allow the net to wrap around the furled headsail, attach the end to the tack horn that remains beneatch the furling drum, and haul it bar-tight using a backup jib halyard. In 4 trips across the pond the spinnaker hasn't managed to slip between the net and the headsail.

The horizontal bands are set about 5 feet apart vertically, and that seems to have worked so far; a section of the kite hasn't managed to blow between the bands and get around the forestay, so the net has worked well.

I like Stan Honey's 'automatic' net design that looks like it should work well on a non-furler headstay; raising the headsail clears the net to the masthead, and dropping the headsail lowers and rigs the net. Gybing under that net would still be a hassle, unless the net is fixed to the spar at or above the height of the spar's spin pole topping lift exit block. Something to think about for boats without a furler.

The serious hassle with the net is gybing the spinnaker, in that I have to get the net out of the foretriangle in order to do a dip-pole gybe; this is especially exciting at night when you can't really see what you're doing but you know there's a lot of stuff flapping around up above in the rigging. To set up the gybe I normally back off the net-halyard tension, disconnect the net from the mast base, run the net forward to the base of the headstay and tie it off there, do the normal gybe (hopefully without tripping, falling, or getting hung up in some bit of rigging whilst running from bow to cockpit and back again while wearing my harness and dragging the tether along attached to a jack line), then untie the net from the headstay base, re-tie the net to the mast base, and then finally (last thing to do in the gybe!) crank the net halyard back up hard. So far it has worked a charm, and I have not had a spinnaker wrap offshore.

When shifting from kite to jib it's easiest to leave the net hoisted and simply transfer the luff tie-down from the tack horn to something at the base of the mast. I did have a problem with this, once, when I left the net hoisted alongside the mast for the night after changing down from kite to downwind twin headsails. Come morning I found that one of the horizontal straps (which are now big loops waving around the mast) had somehow become wrapped tightly around a cap shroud above the second spreader. It took a while to convince the net to let go of the shroud. Following that experience I always remove the net immediately after a) the kite is doused, and b) the jib is up, then c) lower and repack the net for the next hoist.

In retrospect, the hassles are: extra time to rig the net, extra time required to clear and re-set the net during gybes.

the up-sides are: zero spinnaker wraps (so far).

I'm sold on the net for singlehanded offshore racing when an extra 10 minutes spent managing the net is not a significant impact to overall performance.

- rob/beetle