Still not buying it...I've broached more than once (with and without
spinnaker up) while pushing a littler harder
than we should while racing, I'll agree not much fun but there's plenty of
time to do a lot of things. I guess
having a crew that you can trust to spill the halyard when things get really
out of hand helps.

People I've seen in trouble are those with the spin flying straight out at
the top of the mast with the lines ahead of
that. They had a hell of a time trying to get their spin down...I guess if
there's no stopper not in the halyard,
the whole thing can run free and you can go find it later...

I'll give you no stopper in the spin halyard. Maybe I'll re-think the
stopper knot...

Cheers,
Jeffrey Nelson
Muir Caileag
C&C 30
"Rich Hampel" wrote in message
...
Putting stopper knots in spinnaker sheets is very bad practice.
If you ever broach and need to compleatly and instantly let the sheets
fly ..... you wind up on your side or worse and I guarantee that you
will have NO time to cut one of the sheets.
If it gets 'that bad' that the spinnaker is held only by its halyard
(and sheets free) you can always grab one of the free sheet ends and
let the halyard fly..... and save the boat.




In article
ble.rogers.com,
DARat wrote:

I'm having a hard time with no stopper knots in spinnaker sheets/guys as
you
may wish to let
them fly "presumably" in emergency. I'll counter that with if the
sheets
run out on
a spinnaker then you've got a rather large flag flying from the top of
your
mast....or
at least 3/4 if your fractional rigged. I can't imagine that being any
better than
stopped sheets run all the way out, and having someone with a bit of
foresight to
release the halyard...at least that way you can recover the spin from
the
bottom.

If things it too far beyond that, you can always cut away the lines...

Comments?