Submitted on September 25, 2005 by Michael Hesse

Question: Dear North Sails,

Last year, we became the lucky owners of the C&C35 MKII. As a former racer, the boat came with a large set of sails, all made by North Sails. One of the sails is a blooper, which, as I understand, is a sail to be flown in addition to the spinnaker. Since our focus at the present time is primarily on cruising and we are usually short-handed, we are interested in flying spinnakers without a pole. We recently tried that with a symmetric chute and an ATN tacker and that worked reasonably well. Here is my question: Can we use the blooper as some kind of asymmetric spinnaker to be rigged the same way, or is the sail shape unsuitable? If the shape doesn't work, can the sail be re-cut to work as an asymmetric?

Thanks very much,
Michael Hesse

Answer: Hi Michael,

A Blooper is designed to fly as far to leeward of the rig as possible, clear of the mainsail, for square running in concert with a symetrical spinnaker. A modern Asymmetric cruising spinnaker is designed to fly as far to windward of the rig as possible. The sails are very different. A Blooper is not of much use unless you have a spinnaker up and the boat is rolling in a seaway. It will not add any speed to the boat but it will make it more stable. Not many boats carry Bloopers today.

There is not much you can do in terms of recutting a blooper for use as a cruising sail. You would have much better results recutting a symetrical racing spinnaker for use as a centerline tacked cruising asymetrical.

Regards,
Dan Neri

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