The support pole on a Sidley rigid pole clips to fittings either near the foot of the mast (see photos on pages 6 & 27 of Guy Wilkins book 'Mirror Racing') or on the foredeck, just ahead of the mast. It looks like Guy had two fittings on the mast a few inches apart (no doubt to allow the height to be set). I'm not sure of the complete history, I understand having this fitting on the foredeck meant the height of the pole changed as pole angle changed and at the time this was thought to be an advantage. The fitting was often one of the basic plastic spinnaker pole eye fittings (Holt) Allen A132, see http://www.ukmirrorsailing.com/.../a_132_m_spinnaker_pole... and the support strut had a corresponding snap hook (Holt) Allen A31, see http://www.ukmirrorsailing.com/.../a_31_spinnaker_pole.... No doubt other combinations were used - it needs to give some freedom of movement, so the pole angle can change, but at the same time support the pole & (normally) allow the strut to be disconnected when the pole was stowed.
The sketch shows the general arrangement of an end to end pole uphaul & downhaul (in this case with a loop & ramp). Note that the elastic part of the system is in the downhaul - this is very important.
With an end to end pole, when you gybe, the pole end that was on the mast is transferred to hold the guy, and the old guy end goes on the mast. Thus the fittings and the pole layout is symmetric.
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Originally (i.e. in the late 60s) the standard spinnker pole had Holt Allen 31 snap hooks and Holt Allen 56 white plastic rings on the clews of the spinnaker which snapped into the hooks.
On the mast there was a Holt Allen 132 pole eye which the other end of the pole snapped onto. This was a cheap, but hopeless system.
The only type of pole end worth considering is one with a spring loaded pin, plunger or "piston" which can totally enclose the guy. I prefer to have the opening parts of the spinnaker pole ends upwards.
Commonly, a thin line is tied to the two spring loaded pins so either end can be opened when holding the middle, or opposite end of the pole.
These ends need to be used in conjunction with a stainless steel pole eye on the mast which they can attach to, with freedom of movement in all directions. I recommend a spinnaker pole eye with three fixing points such as the Allen Brothers A3442. Note that class rules limit the projection of the eye forward of the mast to 35mm maximum.
Needless to say, with an end to end spinnaker pole, it is symmetric, so this fitting goes in the middle of the pole.
A popular system in the 60's & 70's was to have a spinnaker pole uphaul with a number of stopper knots in it. The Holt-Allen 257 was fitted to the side of the pole. After the guy has been attached to the pole end, a section the uphaul/downhaul, between two of the knots, is jammed in the cleat (on the end of the fitting that will be closest to the mast). By choosing different knots, different pole heights can be achieved without the need for an adjustable uphaul.
One of the most popular systems is a loop and ramp. The ramp fitting is attached to the side of the pole. The uphaul/downhaul has a loop in it big enough to take the pole and ramp and the pole is threaded through the loop. Normally the
Mirror sailors have used a number of methods to stow the spinnaker when it's not in use and facilitate it's hoisting & recovery.
This comprises a spinnaker chute mouth and a fabric sock running back along the foredeck.. This is the most common system and almost universally used today.
Spinnaker chute mouths
From the early days fibreglass spinnaker chute mouths designed to fit the wooden boat were common.
Adverts featuring spinnaker chutes from the 1974 Mirror Class Association Yearbook
These are normally fixed to the bow shapes and the foredeck. The spinnaker is equipped with a reinforced patch in the middle (equal distance for the head and the two clews). A retriver line is attached to this patch and runs through the chute mouth and inside the sock to a block or fairlead aft of the end of the sock. Pulling on the retriver line pulls the spinnaker down and into the sock. Normally, you have a longer spinnaker halyard, and the end is used as the retriver line, forming, with the part of the spinnaker between the patch and the head, an continuous loop.
The chute mouth is normally fitted on the port (left) side of bow. This is to ensure that first spinnaker hoist, on a normal "marks to port" course of a triangle or trapezoidal outer loop, will be with the chute mouth to leeward of the jib. This means there is no danger of the spinnaker blowing inside the jib which is often a risk when hositing the spinnaker with the chute mouth to windward.
The fixing of the chute mouth to the foredeck is often problematic as the deck beams are not usually exactly in line with the fixing hole(s) at the aft end of the mouth. So unless the builder has added a mounting block in exactly the right place under the foredeck, there in nothing you can put screws into. Fixing directly into the plywood may work for a while, but tends to be weak (it's only 5mm ply) and is prone to creating leaks into the front tank that will cause a failure of the buoyancy tank pressure test.
In my experience, a lot of these chute mouths have a small cross section at the aft end where the sock attaches and this means it's hard to pull the spinnaker out of, or recover it back into, them. Needless to say this is less than ideal, particularly for small, young sailors. It also puts a lot of unnecessary strain on the spinnaker, streaching it and thus reducing it racing life. This problem was so bad that Roy Partridge, 1976 World Champion, and other top sailors from that era, preferred to use a net system instead. If you want to try a fibreglass chute mouth, they are still available from chandlers such as Pinnell & Bax.
Any number of ingenious alternative methods of forming the chute mouth have been used. One boat featured in Guy Wilkin's book "Mirror Racing" uses a length of garden hose fixed to the gunwale and centre of the foredeck to form the chute mouth. One of Daniel Vickers' boats utilised a wooden toilet seat.
A Duffin spinnaker chute hoop and short sock fitted to 39508 - Norbert
More recently the wooden spinnaker hoop has been developed which is much kinder on the spinnaker and gives a much better performance. Some, such as the Duffin Mirror Spinnaker hoop (sold by P&B as part number MIR33) are available for retro-fitting.
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GRP boats have Manufacturer specific chute mouths which are tailored to fit that boats deck moulding.
A normal chute mouth will limit how low the jib tack can be set (i.e. about level with the top of the bow shapes). If you want to set the jib tack lower, you may need a custom chute mouth like the one shown above.
Socks
Originally spinnaker socks were long, reaching back to end around the aft edge of the thwart.
Full length spinnaker sock on 70151 - Fairground Attraction
More recently short socks, with a wide opening at the aft end and a "snuffer" have become popular. Typically a short sock ends at the aft end of the foredeck. The position of the turning block or eye for the retriver line remains the same - about level with the aft edge of the thwart, and in line with the end of the sock, so either on the side deck or inside the cockpit. The "snuffer" is a length of elastic with a plastic ring or block fixed to one end. The other end is fixed somewhere inside the chute mouth. The retriver line goes from the middle of the spinnaker into the chute mouth and through the ring or block on the end of the snuffer and then though the sock back to the turning block or eye. When you pull the spinnaker down, the retriver patch catches the ring and the end of the snuffer is streached aft until the spinnaker is down (head and clews in the chute mouth). When you let go of the retriver line, the elastic pulls the ring, and half the spinnaker back into the sock from the aft end.
As discussed above, nets were popular in the 70s and 80s to avoid the problems of the chute mouth reducing the life of the spinnaker. A bit like using spinnaker bags, the spinnaker is just tucked under the net to stow it. Roy Partridge favoured elastic along the front and aft edges. Others had nets with elastic running along the sides.
With a net there was no retriver line. These are quite challanging to use and requiring a lot of helm and crew teamwork. When lowered, the halyard, sheet and guy end up on the same side of the forestay. Best practice was to work out which tack the next hoist would be on, and then drop the spinnaker, or rig it in the dinghy park, so the halyard, sheet and guy would be to leeward on the next hoist. Dropping the spinnaker could be done to leeward (with the crew pulling the spinnaker in under the jib) or to windward (with the crew pulling the guy in and then the spinnker down to windward) as the helm lowers the halyard. Hoisting with the halyard, sheet and guy to leeward was always easy. Hoisting with the halyard, sheet and guy to windward means there is a risk the jib will blow back inside the jib. There was a low risk on a run or broad reach, but on a beam reach the crew either needs to pull the sheet in, to pull the spinnaker around the forestay, as it is hoisted, or throw the bundled spinnaker around the luff of the jib as the helm hoists.
Used with a net, this was a lenth of alloy tube or wood (i.e. broom handle) fixed between the inner gunwales ahead of the net.
Conventional spinnaker bags, either in the forward corners of the cockpit, or in the cuddies. Very rare, but ocassional considered an advantage in a venue with big seas which could sweep across the foredeck and waterlog the spinnaker in a conventional chute and sock or net. In this case it should mean less weight on the foredeck.
The overall length of a spinnaker pole, including the fittings has to be 1524mm or less, see the Class Rules.
The fittings needed depend on the pole system used, see
End to end pole with conventional rope uphaul & downhaul
End to end Sidley rigid pole
The use of a spinnaker chute on Mirror dinghies is now pretty well universal, and as a result, so is a combined spinnaker halyard & retriver line. In other words, the halyard starts tied to the head of the spinnaker, goes around a block just above forestay level, back down to a block normally on the stowage bulkhead, back to a cleat near the aft edge of the daggerboard case and then becomes the retriver line, running around a block and into the end of the sock of the spinnaker chute, coming out of the mouth of the chute and ends tied to the retriver patch in the middle of the spinnaker.
In my experience it's not worth trying to have the halyard and retriver parts different thicknesses. If you try and do this you end up with a join, and that causes trouble. 3mm diameter dyneema/spectra is just thick enough for a spinnaker halyard and is not too heavy when used as a retriver line, so just go for about 12 metres as per our Running Rigging Specification.
Although the general halyard arrangement is pretty standard (described above), there are variations, so I'll now go through things in some detail.
The block just above forestay level.
On all Bermuda masts (apart from the Trident-UK one ), the halyards run inside the mast, so this block is a sheve box. For some reason, Bermuda masts don't tend to have spinnaker cranes fitted (it's a race legal fitting, but nobody seems to bother).
On a Gunter mast the halyards are external and the use of a spinnaker halyard crane is very common, see the article on fitting out a Gunter Mast for details of common spinnaker cranes which is where this block is fitted. On a Trident-UK Bermuda mast, the halyard is external and this block is fitted with a "stand up" spring.
Halyard running down to block on the stowage bulkhead
If the halyard runs inside the mast, it normally emerges via a slot below the gooseneck. On the Superspars this is on the starboard side, on a Needlespar this is on the port side. I don't know about other makes. It probably makes sense for the position of this slot to determine which side of the centreline the turning block is on and which side of the daggerboard case the halyard runs. The aim is to reduce friction by allowing the halyard to run a path with minimal rubbing.
If the halyard is external, I perfer to run it down the port side of the mast (same side as the spinnaker chute) and the port side of the daggerboard case. The length of halyard running down to the bulkhead is prone to blow around when not in use and can get fouled around the spinnaker pole eye etc.
I use a small block fitted to the inboard end of the boom on the port side to help keep the halyard under control and stop it getting fouled up.
I perfer to have the turning block on the stowage bulkhead as low as possible so that, as far as possible, the halyard is out of the way of the crew.
If your block is a single, it's a good idea to have one with a "stand up" spring like this Ronstan RF20141to stop it "capsizing" when there is no tension on the halyard, and then jambing when you try and pull the spinnaker up.
Cleat near the aft edge of the daggerboard case
On wooden boats, a cleat mounted on the batten running up the aft edge of the daggerboard case works well. In this case the cleat is a Ronstan RF5001 with a RF5005, which Ronstan describe as a "front" fairlead.
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You need some sort of fairlead on the cleat to make it easy to cleat the halyard.
On GRP Winders, the cleat is often mounted under the mainsheet block mounting platform.
If you decide to mount the cleat upside down like this, for example under the thwart, you need to ensure it is mounted on a shallow wedge and thus correctly angled, or the halyard runs through a fairlead ahead of the cleat, so the halyard does not uncleat itself under tension.
Some like to run the halyard around a block fixed to the floor aft of the cleat and designed so the halyard runs through the cleat while it is been hoisted as in this photo of 70606 - All The Right Reasons.
Block at the end of the spinnaker sock
The halyard then runs over the top of the toestrap to a block at the end of the spinnaker sock. The location of this block depends on where your sock runs.
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In this case it's on the thwart support which has been angled so the retriver line runs smoothly with the helm standing to pull down the spinnaker.
If your spinnaker sock runs along the sidedeck, the block needs to be fixed to the topsides as on this photo of Winder 70618 - Tinytanic (halyard is thin blue & yellow line).
In order to keep all the spinnaker inside a short sock like this, you need to run the retiver line though a plastic ring before attaching it to the retiver patch on the spinnaker. The ring has a length of elastic fixed to it, about the same length as the sock. The other end is fixed near the mouth of the chute. When you pull the spinnaker down, the elastic streaches and the retriver patch and ring come back well past the end of the sock, pulling the head, tack and clew of the spinnaker into the chute. When you let the retriver line go, the elastic pulls the middle of the spinnaker back into the sock as well.
One final tip from 1997 World Champion Chris Balding is to have a small lacing hook by the port (i.e. same side as the spinnaker chute) shroud plate with the open part facing upwards or forwards.
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When the halyard is not in use it is clipped into the hook and the halyard tensioned slightly and cleated. This keeps the halyard out of the way, not getting blown around and not interfering with the jib or the jib tell tales. If you pull the halyard hard it will come out of the clip so you can hoist the spinnaker normally. Most people find the standard clip works fine. If you find the halyard comes out too easily, you can modify the clip to tighten it up. I drilled a plain non-countersunk hole under the point of the hook, cut the adjacent old fixing hole off and used a pan head screw to reduce the gap for the halyard. A bit of a fiddle, but it worked for me.
