Whisker poles

[ssor]

Is there any difference between a whisker pole and a sprit boom? If not, why spend several hundred dollars on a clanging aluminum pole when a nice one made from wood will serve as well?

[seayou77]

Whats a sprit boom? I wish I had a reaching boom thatd' keep the sheets from the slack shrouds, be good to increase the angle of spinsheet for reaching, That would have to be stout short boom with jaws to fit the sides of mast. My wisker pole is my spinaker pole.

[Ian McColgin]

A sprit boom is simply a boom attached at the mast as a sprit would be, by snotter. Usually used with a "leg o' mutton" low aspect triangular sail, the foot is loose and often slopes down from clew to tack while the sprit boom is horizontal and thus subtends the mast a bit above the tack. The rig is self-vanging and the crease it puts in the sail on one tack has no marked deleterious effect on sailing. Phil Bolger has, both to somewhat enhance performance and to diminish chafe, called for curved sprit booms on some boats.

A whisker pole is for holding a jib out when running wing-on-wing. When wung-out, the jib's sheeting angle makes it form too much belly for good setting and, folded in like that, it keeps trying to gybe back to the mainsail's side. With the whisker pole it can be set out flatter and farther, getting a nice wind and working. In fact, it can be pushed enough that the jib is a tad by the lee (for the jib) thus leaving you a bit safer from accidental gybe on the main.

A whisker pole is lighter than a spinnaker pole as it has far less compression stress. It's normally as simple as possible with just a mild point at one end to jam in the jib's clew and simple half-round crutch or jaws at the other. On a small boat it can be set without leaving the cockpit. If you must go onto the foredeck, it's not uncommon for the whisker pole to have spinnaker pole type fittings at each end and set on a pad eye on the mast. Except on large boats, whisker poles do not need topping lifts and foreguys.

Edited to add: Most racing classes prohibit use of the whisker pole on the lee side. They often have length limits on a whisker pole as well. But a well placed whisker pole can enhance a broad reach.

There's also a reaching strut for use with a spinnaker on a reach. The pole may be so far forward that it's about on or even hard on the jibstay and the stress on the guy is huge, making adjustment a pain. A nice reaching strut sometimes set from the mast but sometimes even from the rail to get the guy out, like a dolphin striker for the gobline, makes things far nicer.

KISS at work.

[ 03-06-2005, 10:39 AM: Message edited by: Ian McColgin ]

[ssor]

Ian, If I am correct in my interpretation here then a snotter would serve well enough to allow adjusting a whisker pole. As long as the load on the pole was within the limits of the strength of the pole there should be no problem. smile.gif

[Tom Lathrop]

Ian, you are showing your age. The new "simplified" racing rules do not include any mention of requiring the pole to be on the opposite side from the main boom. It's now legal to have it set to leeward. You could even have a short one set to leeward with a downhaul so the jib sheeting angle can be much greater for reaching.

[bainbridgeisland]

Originally posted by ssor:
Ian, If I am correct in my interpretation here then a snotter would serve well enough to allow adjusting a whisker pole. As long as the load on the pole was within the limits of the strength of the pole there should be no problem. smile.gif I sail a Windmill class sailing dinghy. Many in the class use a system similar to the one you are suggesting. We keep the wisker pole on the boom. The aft end of it is attached to bungee that retracts it along the boom when not needed. To extend we simply haul on a line that goes to the aft end of the pole and then cleat it. So the effective attachment to the mast and the tensioning of the wisker pole is controled by a snotter-like system.

You can find out more about the Windmill class and this wisker pole here: http://www.windmillclass.org/
Look in the rigging / rigging guide / automated wisker pole section

[Ian McColgin]

Showing both age and only racing with archaeic fleets.

The Windmill approach is not like a snotter. It is a nice way to keep the unit attached to the mast for stowage.

I think rigging the whisker pole with a snotter is way to complex to do in the event. The mast end of a sprit or sprit boom has either a hole or a simple notch for the snotter to go through. So, to set the pole you either: thread that hole each time; leave it rove which means extra line rattling around when beating, not to mention the pain of how to gybe if the pole is longer than the foretriangle; or run the risk of it bouncing out of the notch as you set up.

Believe me, the simplest of jaws does the trick. Very light. Nothing like boom or gaff jaws that take major wracking and twisting strains. It's called a "whisker" pole for its light resembelance to a cat's whisker.

And if you want to use a pad eye on the mast - very nice in boats over 25' or so - or even a pad-eye rigged on a track like spinnaker fittings now commonly are rigged - that's fine too.

The snotter is not suitable for spars that are set and struck multiple times underweigh.

[bainbridgeisland]

Ian

I agree with you that the Windmill link doesn't exactly show a wisker pole rigged like a snotter. What you don't see in the link is the many variations of the system. For example, instead of using the tube at the front of the boom to guide the wisker pole, some folks use a topping lift to the forward tip of the wisker pole. In that variation, the aft end of the wisker pole is more snotter-like. Remember that on very small dinghys, snotters sometimes are simply dead ended at the lower end of the sprit instead or a bight running through a hole or groove. It would be this simpler version that is similar to the wisker pole. system.

Edited to add the following: By the way the Windmill is more than 50-years old. I don't know that I would consider it a classic boat but it is older than many "classics". For a class of this age, Windmills are very fast, slightly slower than a 470 trapeze dinghy even though a Windmill does not have a spinnaker or trapeze. They are still competitive when built with wood.

[ 03-07-2005, 02:38 PM: Message edited by: bainbridgeisland ]

[ssor]

The sprit that I use on my canoe sail I made from a doug fir closet pole and carved neat 2" deep jaws in each end. These allow 1/4" double braid to fit without jambing, I have a loop at the aft top corner of the sail and a loop in the snotter with a rolling hitch on the mast. I envison a system in which the snotter is secured to the mast, lead through the inboard jaws and cleated on the pole. This should allow some adjustment in effective length. We don't sail competitively and would rig this primarily for fairly long down wind runs.

[Tom Lathrop]

Ian, Bainbridge,

The auto setting rig on some Windmills is like a snotter. The guys who use it extend and retract it with each jibe so it usually untouched by human hands. It does require that the main be jibed first and that care be taken not to go too far past dead downwind before the pole is under control on the new windward side. Otherwise you'll break it or not be able to get it out.

Never used it myself as I'm an old dog and this is a new trick. Windmill 2316 and 5416.

Larry Christian has flown a spinnaker with trapeze on his Windmill. I clocked him at over 12mph with GPS on my powerboat a few years ago at the Nationals after the races. This was to windward (don't know the angle) since there was insufficient wind to support the trapeze off the wind.

[ 03-07-2005, 05:02 PM: Message edited by: Tom Lathrop ]

[Dan McCosh]

Re: wood poles. I've blown a few apart, and today I'm a little leery of using poles that disintegrate into splinters, rather than bend or collapse.

[Ian McColgin]

I've not even been in a Windmill since '64 or so and was not familiar with it's rig. Sounds like fun.

If you're getting a lot of compression strain on the whisker pole, you are not using it the way it was intended. I like them of such length that the whiske pole points ahead a bit and the sail has a bit of natural belly. If you sheat it back hard the sail flattens. One might think that a flattened sail would present more effective surface area to be pushed and that down wind the Bernouli is not so important, but I think that untrue. Flattening the jib by pulling it back actually presents a sloped and effectivly smaller triangle to the wind. And even through it's not the same consistent lift as when beating or reaching, a curved sail will pull harder.

So, if you're breaking whisker poles, try relaxing and ease the sheet a tad.

That said - there are large jibs and highly loaded boats that take a husky pole. But for your basic skiff or open centerboarder . . .