Saturday, January 8, 2011

Articulating Spinnaker Pole


Spinnaker Pole Set-up

I've had a couple of questions about the set-up, Andrew has loaded photos onto the forum some time ago. This may be a little easier to find or remember. The set-up on Shazza is a direct copy of Tokyo Trash Baby and Andrew helped to set it all up and Rob who sails on TTB did the welding work and fabricated the fitting for Shazza.



Below is the pivot point. Above and below the pole itself are aluminium plates to make sure the pole can swing smoothly--not hit bolts below and not jam on forestay fitting above. The tack line also feeds through a dead eye here. Put the dead eye further forward or back and it will affect the tension on the tack line when jibing.
Shock cord is in the short end of the pole (we have approx 1ft of pole behind the pivot point) to make the pole want to swing itself out to a central position when the control lines are un-cleated, we use two strands of 8mm shock cord per side.

As TTB made me aware. If your pivot point and 'bow line' are in a direct line, your bow line will be tight when the pole is retracted and loose when the pole is out front. You can see the round fitting low on the bow--no good it does the above. By getting the bow line behind the leading edge of the bow your line will work correctly--loosen when retracted and tighten when letting the pole out. The solution below was to drill a hole about 2 inches behind the bow and pass through very good quality line so the bow line could come right back that two inches and go forward a couple of inches past the face of the bow-----Ugly and temporary, but very strong and effective.

The pole leading end. Pulley for the tack line-Black rope. Bow-line is yellow/green/red. Jibe control lines are white/black. Just behind the pole and at the left side you can see a white/ green flecked line--that is the two lines of shock cord which run back to the chainplates

Sorry the photo is bad. The white/black control line from the front of the pole is just long enough to lead back to a pulley while keeping this first pulley short of the second pulley. The second pulley gives a 2:1 on the control/jibe lines, yellow/blue. I like to have continuous lines on my boats also, so remember to buy plenty of rope. We used 6mm on the 2:1 and only 4mm (best quality) on the white/black line.
I hope this helps, if not Andrew and I are always happy to answer questions as are all the other guys with the articulating pole.