On Tue, 3 Jan 2006 11:07:14 +1100, "d parker"
wrote:

Do you find the windage and turbulence has a negative effect on your
windward performance this way?

============================

Nothing that is significant enough to notice. It dramatically
improves the speed of getting the pole ready for a spinnaker hoist
however, and also the speed of getting the foredeck clear to tack
after a spinnaker take down and jib hoist. We also found that it went
a long way towards preventing mistakes which can be very costly. One
of my other pole handling innovations was to rig an internal shock
cord system inside the pole to automatically retract the topping lift
pennant back to the mast end. All of this assumes dip pole jibes
where the same end is always attached to the mast.

I'm talking about short course, round-the-buoys racing of course. On
a distance race where you are about to head upwind for many hours I
would probably stow the pole unless it was at night when the risk of
mistakes is higher.