N1EE wrote:
1 point to you Doug.

The local Star sailors here still do it.
I've never done it myself, I usually start
with the bitter end and let it fall randomly,
and only had one easly to clear snag using
that method.

On a boat with a mast head rig, the spinnaker halyard can be long
relative to the cockpit & working area. Something's gotta be done! On
big boats there are a lot of people sitting around with nothing else to
do, so one of them carefully flakes the spi halyard tail into a line
bag. On hotter boats, it's too busy, but you can still have a line bag
with a large opening that it's easy for the skipper or middle man to
drop the tail into and it usually comes out OK.

The first boat I raced seriously was a 470 with a 1:2 spinnaker halyard
led to a squirrel cage (a reel for taking up slack line). This was
considered ultra-modern after the next most recent innovation, the
continuous spinnaker halyard (which actually is very handy and the idea
survives in the A-sail boats with the take-down line led to the middle
of the chute). This was in the 1970s.


I might consider it in fresh water. I'd
prefer to keep my lines clean and dry.

Have you ever used that method?

When I was learning, some people used to throw the sheet into the water
ahead of the boat, to get the line fed around the forestay for the
hoist. Now that's rather old-school, as Oz says.

I'd rather keep lines out of the water myself. It's not good for them
and if another boat snags the line, it's a foul on you. Of course you
could try tying different knots trailing a line as you did 720s... do
they give trophies for that?

Fresh Breezes- Doug King