Hi SandS,
The Aso is made with Superkote 90 155m2, aka 0.9 ounce. A bit on the heavy side, but to take advantage of that beam, I really don't want to be dropping the kite just when it is getting interesting. Uses a snuffer rather than a furler, but there is a 104m2 gennaker on a Profurl furler, you know the ones that stay on the sail when you drop it? Another new one for me.
Yes, the inner forestay is for sails, I went for a 26m2 staysail on hanks. The intent to change down gears as someone put it from the headsail at 44m2. The headsail is the same cloth, Hydranet and is on the furler you can see in the pic. As the wind picks up, it should be a matter of simply furling the headsail, and hauling up the staysail, or vice versa. As Cisco mentioned, I can go for a couple of hanked headsails, and also three sail reaching, wahoo!
No symmetrical pole for mine, that is another first for me. The left hand sheet you can see on the deck is the carbon sprit outhaul, it runs back through the rear of the sprit to a hardpoint on the other side of the pole opposite the sheet block. The next sheet is the staysail downhaul and inner forestay hard point. This is a really neat but complex setup that runs down into the spinnaker well (that is the chamber you can see behind the anchor well), I'll have to let you know when I go over how to commission how it all works again, I've forgotten how it all connects together.
Yep, you nailed it, one of the big appeals is exactly that, no major outlays except for the usual maintenance. It is pretty much optioned complete at delivery, I won't be able to afford anything like food let alone more boat spendy's for a while, and I think my better half would lynch me if I did! Like all of us poor yachties, this ended up taking a lot longer than I thought, this one has been 12 years to squirrel away the funds, so now being able to spend it is enormous fun.
It is sobering how much more you could spend though, for example I could easily add another 10 boat dollars to the NKE, or another 8 bd for a Code 0, (I only have one Code 5 gennaker) but I had to stop somewhere I suppose
I apologise to all Seabreezers, I don't want to hijack the thread, but it is hard not to answer some of the questions without rambling on a bit (character flaw methinks) . I hope this is not too annoying to anyone.
SB