COMMENT
SPINNAKER SAILING SHOULD BE SOMETHING YOU LEARN FROM THE VERY START
Once we left Brazil, we suddenly remembered we had a spinnaker on board and we’d never used it!” Knut Skauan and Anita Stark were recounting the stories and learnings of a five-year circumnavigation of the globe on Mais Uma, their Outremer 45, during one of many seminars and coaching sessions that make up the biannual training week Outremer organises for owners.
Not remembering you have a spinnaker on board after sailing over 5,000 miles from the Mediterranean to Brazil sounds like a pretty significant oversight. But is it really that unusual to sail a third of the way around the world and not open a spinnaker bag? Well, no.
As I looked around the room, the audience were split between those nodding in empathy, and those who looked completely puzzled. Contrary to what you might expect, it was the moderately experienced cruisers that seemed relieved to find out that even circumnavigators don’t need spinnakers. Most of the surprised faces belonged to the beginners.
The basis of any tuition the coaches (including myself ) at Outremer provide, is to prepare future owners to safely and efficiently bluewater cruise their specific boats. Not beholden to any formal syllabus, we spend most of the time teaching passage planning based on weather forecasts, manoeuvring in confined spaces, and the usage and selection of sails. I’m almost certain that every Outremer leaves the factory with a spinnaker. Most of them are furling gennakers, but there are symmetric and asymmetric spinnakers peppered in there too. Therefore, almost all the training we deliver includes spinnaker work.
I’d guess at least 25% of future Outremer owners at the seminars are entirely new to sailing. What’s fun about coaching novice sailors is that nothing needs to be ‘unlearned’. You have a blank slate and can start fresh, teaching safe techniques from Day 1 and instil healthy doses of fear where appropriate.
For the experienced sailors bad habits can be undone given time, repetition and focus, but it’s often a frustrating and near-impossible task to rewrite their mindset. So, after just a week’s training, the novices leave with a respectful relationship with spinnakers; I’d characterise it as trepidation but not panic. The more experienced cruisers, on the other hand, sometimes leave these training weeks stressed, realising they’ve bought a boat that enjoys a spinnaker, but are also worrying that expensive sail is one that causes damage, is super-complicated to use and is really on
