H18 Turbo
In the land locked waters of Lake Pleasant in Arizona, there are some exciting winds at dawn, but the typical regatta starts about noon or one when the wind is transitioning. Breeze is light and shifty and can be a bit frustrating. We’ve been working with Dave Potter to build up and H18 for light breeze and comfort, we have two H18 Magnum rigs with spinnakers, so we’ll see how they do this season.
We’ve setup two H18 Magnum boats with Hobie Tiger F18 spinnakers. Spin poles are about 11′ long and feature NACRA snuffer hoops with snuffer bags made for us by Elliott Pattison Sail Loft. I’ve been playing a lot with spinnakers over the years with various levels of results. This page will serve to track the build and performance of these rigs as we test them and race them with the Arizona Yacht club.
I’ve spoken through my setups with a number of customers over the years, it’s been a similar setup with H18, H16 and H20 rigs I’ve run.
Jan 2022 Rigs feature:
- 11.5′ spin poles
- Mid Pole Snuffer System
- Hobie Tiger Spinnaker
- Sheeting blocks mounted to wings (currently have some concerns about support for the load…)
- Dyneema Loop halyard block
- Separate tack and halyard lines
Dyneema Halyard Block Mount –
I picked up this setup from Brett Peterson a number of years back, which is seen on many modern spin boats. Drill a hole in the luff track on either side as close as you can to the forward edge of the luff track (closest to the front of the boat) This allows you to create a mounting point without penetrating the mast and needing to seal it. Typically this position is also well clear of the luff rope of your sail, and shouldn’t interfere with hoisting. In this photo there are two stopper knots within the track, but you can also make 4 holes, and have the line come out of the mast, and have the stoppers outside the track. This creates less interference with the sail, and may make it easier to adjust or tie a tighter knot. The loop is tied through the halyard block shackle, or if you have a hollow center block, you can run it through the block as seen here. This loop will support the horizontal load of the spinnaker.
Another line come down from the mast head or front of the mast to support the vertical load. For Hobie Comptip masts, this can be done by drilling a small hole through the mast head, and creating a loop that goes around the front edge of the mast head. The two lines should be positioned in a way that evenly supports the block. The block is also allowed to pivot around the mast, without inducing mast rotation or loading one side of the line or mount. This should also ensure that the block is always oriented in the direction of rotation appropriate for the hoist or douse.
H18 Spin Pole Mounting –
The 1.5″ aluminum pole size that is commonly used on F18 boats is a great choice for Hobie 18 setups. We can borrow the hoops and bags for our kites, and often the kites themselves. The H18 has a weird front edge of the front crossbar that can make mounting a little challenging. What we’ve been doing, is recycling an old rudder gudgeon and utilizing a tiller yoke assembly through the Nacra rear Spi pole end cap. The gudgeon needs to be bent a bit, but can be mounted to the underside of the front crossbar with some rivets. With this setup, the pole can rotate and pivot a bit with spin setup tuning and be easily removed with a clevis pin. The front of the pole is supported with dyneema bridles with spliced loops, captured by the eyestrap that mounts the tack block on the front of the pole. These bridles can be run back to a long shackle used to mount the regular bridles to the boat (instead of the standard clevis pin) or have additional holes drilled in the leading edge of the bow tang to accommodate a 3/16″ shackle or other similar hardware. I am generally partial to avoiding drilling holes in structural components, but it makes rigging the pole easier. If you can locate or have H18 SX tanks with holes drilled, all the better! Drill holes in your boat at your own risk! There are many ways that things can go wrong.
Sheeting and Turning Block Mounting –
Sheeting blocks and turning blocks are key to proper spin control. In case these are new terms, the sheeting blocks are the blocks that actually control your spin shape. These are the first blocks that the spin sheet goes through when coming from your sail. The block position determines the sheeting angle for the sail, inboard or outboard, forward and aft. The turning blocks are less critical and may or may not be significant for your setup. The main function of the turning block is just to help get the sheet to the trimmer at a better angle and clean up the deck. This can be important if that angle would come from the sheeting block without sufficiently wrapping the line around the sheeting block, so that any ratcheting potential and purchase is greatly reduced.
On my H16 spin setup, the correct sheeting angle seemed to place the block up on the front corner casting, in this case, the small spinnaker and forward position of the sheeting block made the turning blocks useless and they weren’t used. The H18 and H20 kite has a higher load, and a sheeting position further aft, so the sheeting blocks tend to be mounted near the shrouds and have turning blocks up near the front crossbar. This keeps the spin sheet away from the crew and skipper turning upwind maneuvers and creates nearly a 180 degree wrap around the sheeting block for the trimmer.
My first spin setup utilized spin blocks mounted to the shroud adjusters or shroud anchor pin with the shrouds, but I found myself bending shroud anchor pins at a much higher rate, so I moved the blocks onto extra jib cars that I installed on the stock jib tracks. That position was pretty good, but often a bit more inboard of a trim position that I’d like with the tiger kite. This is why we’re going to try to mount them to the wings. The big H18 SX kites were mounted to the back of the SX wings, but those wings have some better aft support. More info to follow…
Halyard and Tack positioning –
The halyard is largely run like an F18. It’s setup as a continuous line to both hoist and retrieve the kite. The halyard runs up to the block shown above, down to a 180 pivot block on the starboard side of the mast, down through a turning block on the crossbar, back through a stainless ring mounted to some bungee at the rear beam, and then through the trampoline and rear of the snuffer back and connects up near the head of the kite to form a loop. I like keeping the tack line separate as a great way to depower the kite in an emergency. The halyard can be blown off part way to rapidly depower the kite, and with a tack line fixed, the top of the kite blows off and the kite blows out away from the boat. If the tack line and halyard are connected, a quick blow off will simply let the kite balloon out and remain powered up. This comes into play in situation racing with bridges, rivers, container boats and competitors on events such as the Delta Ditch Run from Richmond to Stockton in California. Most of the time you can steer down, ease off or otherwise plan for it, but in racing we sometimes push it a bit close and it’s nice to have all the options available.
This also creates a pretty simple tack setup. A short line runs from the tack of the sail, through the tack block on the front of the pole, and then back to a cleat mounted to the front crossbar. That’s it! It’s important to have a fairlead or other device to keep the line within the cleat area, but other than that… super simple.
UPDATE Feb 13 2022 Test Sale!
We went out to Lake Pleasant on Sunday for some final assembly and a test sail. After a couple of hoists in the yard, we quickly discovered that the old F18 sail was rapidly giving up on life. The halyard sheave position was no longer functional, as the sail was beginning to tear and stretch rapidly. The wind was light and my crew was new at spin work, so we took it out anyway. We used the FWD wip snuffer system, which features a narrow aluminum opening and a long snuffer bag, with mesh bottom and canvas top. The snuffer bag has two sets of retrieval grommets, and actual works much better than expected. The sail glides into the hook with little resistance and the bag looks to be capable of taking a 3 grommet F18 sail or 2 grommet F18 sail, among others. The only concern with that snuffer system is the sharp edge of the aluminum opening designed to go around the spinnaker pole. It seems setup for 1.75″ which is a rare size. It could likely be clamped down around a 1.5″ pole, but it didn’t sit super smooth. We wrapped the corners with some rigging tape to ensure no snags were possible.