Poles no longer apart but joined in the warmth of the sun room
One of the advantages of overlapping genoas is that if you are doing “non spinnaker” racing you can pole out the overlapping genoa and have more projected sail area downwind. On Passion we had genoas with LP of greater than 6 metres and had both a 5 metre fixed pole and a 6 metre extendable pole. The large overlap genoa with the 6 metre pole was quite successful in the Greenwich Flying Squadron blue fleet.
With Passion X, I was concerned to get a better ORCi rating and had the 5 metre pole cut down to 4,7 metres to match the 600 mm short bowsprit. The reduced length was not a big issue in strong winds but in the light winds the genoa transferred from Passion to Passion X was not setting well. Also the extendable pole is heavy and difficult to extend in heavy airs. The crunch came when I dropped the 4.7 metre pole on Geoff’s head and I realized it was too heavy for safety. I subcontracted the task of finding a carbon pole to the crew and they came up with a suggestion of a CST pole from New Zealand. After a bit of negotiation we settled on a size and specification and Elaine agreed it was a good idea so we went ahead. As days progressed we found lots of bits missing from the quote and so the cost grew. Because more work was coming in we let the cost grow including the GST when the kit arrived in Australia.
I had proposed to put the kit together at Joe Walsh rigging and then motor over and throw it on board Passion X but the work was still piling up so I picked up the kit from Margaret Street in Woolwich and started the work at home.
Tonight it is all joined up except for some extra carbon I am going to put over the outside of the join. A little bit extra carbon on the outside will improve the strength considerably due to both the extra thickness and the larger diameter. Still it will be a light air pole and mainly for poling our the genoa but we will probably give it a go on the big yellow spinnaker in the light airs where an extra 1.3 metres projection will be useful.