Picture perfect spinnaker drop

Today was one of those very rare, perfect Hong Kong sailing days where was enough wind to keep the boat going comfortably but not too much that the sea state was uncomfortable. Daniel was so kind as to meet me at Wong Shek Pier for an absolutely incredible 42.6 nautical mile sail home from Hoi Ha Wan after Sula spent almost 2 weeks around Double Have and Hoi Ha Wan.

The two major highlights of the day, besides the excellent company, were a massive spinnaker run of over 20 nautical miles with a couple flawless gybes and light (no) wind sailing in the harbor maneuvering at tenths of knot of boat speed to avoid harbor shipping traffic while enjoying a picture perfect sunset and artisanal clouds.

In this post, I want to share a video of us dropping Sula's spinnaker and explain the process as it is slightly different than what usually happens on a fully-crewed race boats and or class boat like an Etchells. But first, some photos from the day:

Dropping the spin

In this video, Big Captain Daniel and I douse Sula's spinnaker and stow it in the starboard bow locker. As Daniel eases the working sheet, I pull on the dousing line, lowering the sock and snuffing the sail. Daniel releases the sheet and moves to the spinnaker halyard winch to prepare to ease the halyard.

As Daniel begins to ease the halyard, dropping the sail, which now lives securely out of the wind in the sock form, I detach the tack from the tack point and the sheets from the clew and pulls the foot of the sail over the anchor windlass and into the bow locker. To make the spinnaker easy to deploy next time, I arrange the tack and clew of the sail so that the tack is on the deck forward of the bow locker and the clew is on the deck immediately aft of the locker. As Daniel eases the halyard, I flake the sock fore and aft in the bow compartment.

When the head of the sail reaches the locker, I detach the halyard, return it to the it's stowed position on the pullpit and fold the clew and tack of the sail over the head of the sail. Finally, Daniel and I disassemble and stow the sheets and the tack boot so that we can unfurl the genoa and sail closer to the wind.

It takes a bit longer to drop the spinnaker on Sula and get the headsail out because the tack is a boot that goes on the furled genoa, so you can't hoist or drop while the genoa is in use. This is impractical for racing, but works very well for cruising, especially when the distances are long...which are Sula's forte.