Thought i might join in briefly. An asymmetrical is god send to those who
sail short handed, single watchsting, or the single handers. It does the
job of the spinnaker but not quite as well but handles like a normal
headsail but not quite as well. On the last boat I had inherited double
forestays. To get real macho I ran two baloon type sails at once. One was
the asymmetrical and the other was a four hank drifter meant for quite
another purpose but it worked. Onthat one I clipped on a light pole that
didn't require the support of a halyard. In down wind light airs it was
quite effective as long as you quartered off about 20 degrees or a bit more.
It was also effective at making other people (and sailors) gawk when they
realized a single hander was running two chutes at once. Of of course the
wildy different color patterns of each added hugely to the effect! I think
I would have to come down on the side of the racers for a full baloon with
all the poles and trimmings for racing but for the five knot an hour is
plenty cruising crowd the asymmetrical is certainly the best choice.

Now having started that one up again I shall go to Raffles.

Michael


wrote in message
...
On 25 Jun 2003 22:19:29 GMT, (Bobsprit) wrote:

I think that it is aimed at people who have a normal spinaker, but who
don't have an asymmetric. A spinaker is a bit more macho than a cruising
chute, so I think that more people(me included) own a spinaker than an
assymetric.

I don't have the asymetrical chute, BTW. I'll try flying the thing over
the
next few days and take some pics of the dismasting! I have the
Spinnaker-Guy
setup and also something very much like it from UK, which is what I used
yesterday. In the brief moments when we had 2-3 knots, it got the boat
moving
when my heavy genoa would have hung like a sheet of drywall.

RB

Geez, Bob. You said you were going sailing tonight. I guess you forgot and
accidentally posted when you said you'd be sailing. We went out at 5, and
we
just got home. I took some pics of the racers off of East Haven near the
finish
line (cow & calf on the charts) at around 8:10. Sorry to hear that the
excellent
sailing weather scared you off AGAIN!

BB