J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Asymmetrical

The sprit will be a custom job done on deck. it will slid out and be pinned in position. My friend is a structural engineer specializing in aluminum fabrications and welding and he did a fabulous job on his sprit but that was a Fraser 30. He will make it for me at cost.
There will be a bob stay to prevent twisting especially if I go to a code Zero as well.
but I will be able to retract it and remove it for OD racing.
I will just do a normal launch and dispense with the furler. that's more for the genakers then the big A sails.

I am waiting to see the size of Sail to select the sheave to suit the load on it.
But I will just cut a new slot and insert the new sheave. no big deal.

Necromancing this 3 year old thread...

I'm adding a bowsprit to Ananda. Likely the Seldèn retractable version, 75mm diameter. This will be supporting a running asymmetrical spinnaker that I plan on using instead of a symmetric (too much work for me, haha!).

The asym size is still being discussed. My sailmaker wants to make it 880 sq feet, but I think that's a little large. It'll be deployed and doused with an ATN sock operated from the cockpit.

What do you guys think? Should I go for it? Smaller sail? Larger?

Alex,

Since I own both a symetric (J/30) and asym (J/109) boat, I can say that the asym on a boat that is designed for symetric just doesn't work as well. On Rhapsody I have single handed with the autohelm and flown the spinnaker. I have used a sock and no sock. The sock is more pain than it's worth. Here is what works using the symmetrical spinnaker.

1. Lead all spinnaker lines back to the cockpit (spin halyard, topping lift, foreguy, twings, spin sheets). If you have twing blocks attached to padeyes within a couple inches outboard of the shrouds, you'll find the foreguy isn't needed. If you put turning block on the stanchion bases by the primary winches, you can use the primary winches easily for trimming spin & pole. I have self tailers and a harken 150 to quickly lock a line in place.

2. Put a Harken 150 cam cleat on the mast to jump the spin halyard and topping lift. Once the spinnaker is up, you take the slack out of the halyard in a rope clutch aft and remove the halyard from the cam cleat.

3. You can launch from a bag on the rail attached on either side of the 1st stanchion. I usually do a dead headed launch when single handing.

4. Attach spin sheets and halyard. Twing on tight for the pole side. Pole up using the cleat on the mast, then take slack back aft and remove from cleat on mast.

5. pre-feed the guy end to the headstay (pull it out of the bag)and take the slack out in the cockpit. Put it on the primary winch, then pull pole aft about 2 feet.

6. Pre-feed the sheet to a mark you'll make where the spinnaker just starts to fill. This allows you to raise the halyard without getting pulled up the mast, or getting the spin wrapped around the headstay. Lock the spin sheet in the primary at this setting.

7. Heading about 30 degrees off the wind, raise the spinnaker halyard at the mast. lock it in place with cleat, then head aft to trim spin and pull halyard through clutch - take out of mast cleat.

Below is a picture taken when I was single handing Rhapsody around Conanicut Island with the spinnaker. The second picture is the asym spinnaker I bought off ebay. If you want to try an inexpensive sail, I'll sell this to you for $200 plus you pay shipping. Maybe it will work better with a bow sprit, but tacked to the bow, it just doesn't project enough to get a wide range of sailing angles off the wind.

Hi Bill,

Nice, these are awesome instructions! I do plan on eventually flying symmetric spinnakers too (if I take the boat to Hawaii I'd be crazy not to).

Can you elaborate on the problems flying an asymmetric on a boat not designed for one? I know that without a bowsprit, the asym is just not far enough away from the main to fly cleanly. By adding one, the luff should have enough room to rotate to weather as I turn downwind. It's deep broad reaching that I want - Ananda already goes like a bat out of hell on a beam reach, I'm not worried about more speed reaching.

your success with an A sail is based on your typical sailing program ... the America Cup boats using monohulls used both A and/or S and I believe with the same size pole. But it did project out in front of the forestay.

10 years ago I used the J/30 pole on a Oday 27 and was pretty happy with the results using an A with a sock. We could jibe it flying it outside the forestay, but that took a bit of coordination. But easy plan was to sock and unsock.

There is a J/30 in RI who has used the A sail well and constructed a semi fixed bow sprit, but his marina decided that when he was deployed at the slip he was oversize and they started to charge him more.

When we do spin runs as a day sail we make sure we are doing a comfortable spin reach coming back. No one on the crew likes deaddown ... boring.

Alex,

I think the cut on the asym I used on Rhapsody has the sheeting angle too low. It is hard to tell if that was contributing to the narrow wind angle that the sail carried. Perhaps the pole extension you mention may fix this.

Vic, great to hear I'm not alone on this. I have a 40' slip so I'm not worried about being charged for the extra length. I also will be mounting a fully removable sprit, so it can be stored belowdecks when needed.

I like boring! I often sail shorthanded or with non-sailing friends, and San Francisco is not known for its light wind days.

If our standard J30 spin is 700 and he is recommending 880 for SF I would also be inclined to back off.

You may not feel comfortable with non race crew.

A's do work wing on wing which confused me a lot at first. But 880 is a big sail in heavy wind and traffic. The sock only works easily if the sail is shadowed.

We use a 1000 sqft spin on an F31 and it can take some serious manpower at times to launch and retrieve in cruising mode.

Vic,

Yeah, I have the same concerns. I think it's going to come in somewhere around 800. I think one difference might be this is a cut specifically for deep downwind sailing, not for reaching, so it's bigger than it otherwise would be. Here's how Don from Pineapple put it:

"In 20 knots true wind, if you're sailing downwind at 10 knots of boat speed, the breeze on your sail is more like 10 knots. So, yes, a bigger sail will sail downwind better than a small one. The big sail would be less happy to sail true wind angles of 90 or less in 20 knots, but in 10 knots you'd be sailing around at high angles like 50-60 degrees. Tight reaching.

If your goal is sailing 150-160 apparent wind angles in no more than 20 knots, then you're going to want the bigger sail. If you get caught needing to sail higher angles then you can reach with your main & jib. If you want to crush across the bay from Sausalito to Pier 39 in 20 knots then you may want the smaller kite."

That is an awfully narrow range sail ... sounds like a race sail for long distance where the wind is predicted to be just right for it. Hey 155 is where we love to sail the S.

It still won't get the boat up on plane in 20 and you will be lucky to run at ~8 kts in comfort. And you will need crew weight in the back of the boat.

I think we are all better off with a standard AP spin on a pole. You have a lot more options on course changes and spin control. And for sure one 15 year old can do foredeck in non race conditions easily. We have 70+ year olds that play foredeck spin all winter here. Our standard Program A day sail is upwind 3+ miles, and get in position to return with wind 110 to 160 or 200 to 250. Nice safe fun spinning.