I wonder who now owns the patent on the gun mount spinnaker system?
As a single handed sailor I think it is the best spinnaker management system I have ever seen. It is surprising that no one else out there has adopted the design (at least for single handed cruisers). Any patents must surely be nearing expiry by now.
Does anyone have the specs for the gun mount spinnaker for a F38? Mine didn’t have one and I’m completely sold on the idea after watching an old video of the gun mount design on an F21. If anyone knows who might fabricate them, that info would be appreciated, too.
Gun mount… What kind of sailing are you thinking about. Shorthanded or with crew. A standard spinnaker setup is hard to beat and even asymmetrical designs can be sailed to much deeper angles. Also, controls have evolved since the gun mount and you may have more viable if sailing shorthanded - a well designed sock or a top down furler would control the beast during sets and gybes… and you can not set straight from the bow, consider a removable sprit. I would talk to several sailmakers and riggers to get recommendations and also a sense of who would support you the most.
Erik
We are now looking into a genniker or cruising chute with a sock for our F38 - and plan to attach tack to top of bow pulpit where gun mount would go if we had one. As a former owner of a gun mount spi (on our F30), I can tell you that they are amazingly easy to use (launch, jibe, douse) and a real pain to set up. Set up is enough of a pain that I don’t think we used it more than 9 times in 10 years we owned the boat.
Sailmon,
I don’t know what you mean by a pain to setup. I use my gun mount spinnaker almost every weekend. True, it use to take me forever to lace the launch sleeve onto the pulpit but I fixed that about the 5th time out by rigging snap hook to the pulpit. I have since swapped out the snap hooks for locking D rings to prevent accedentaly snagging/ripping the chute.
It takes maybe 5 min. to roll out the launch sleeve; hook it to the pulpit; attach the halyard and two tacks; tie off the stern end to the main traveler track; and tie off the retreval line to a deck pad eye. Stowing it at the end of the day takes about the same amount of time in revers order.
I almost always sail alone, so I really like the idea of being able to do all my spinnaker handling without having to leave the cockpit. The lake I sail on can see the wind change from 3k out of the north to 30k out of the south in less than 60 seconds, so it is great to be able to dose the spinnaker from the safety of the cockpit without having to run up onto the foredeck to fight a flapping mountain of fabric into a bag before it fouls up and ends up in the water.
I also like the fact it is perfectly balanced, and you can adjust the sail with one hand rather than a winch - no matter how hard the wind is blowing.
I figure it takes me about 45 minutes to rig the spinnaker in the spring, and then another 30 minutes to get it back into the boat in the fall. For the rest of the year it lives in it’s sock on the deck and is ready to go whenever I feel like using it.
The only experience I have had with modern spinnakers is when I crew for some racing friends of mine. I have had some really scary experiences dealing with those monsters on windy days! On my boat I want safe and simple.
If you plan to leave the spi rigged all the time, you may want to consider a more uv resistant material for the sock. Nylon will not hold up well to the uv.
What I meant by pain to set up was: pulling pole off deck, securing in sleeve, snapping blocks deck near pulpit and on toe rail, pulling sail bag from sail locker, running and securing leashes (pole end and cockpit end), securing retrieval bag and sail along lifelines, pulling head of sail out of bag and up through pulpit, attaching halyard, pulling sheets/guys out of bag, securing to sail and running through blocks across deck & and back to cockpit, and finally securing retrieval line. Upon returning to dock, needing to reverse all of above. To me seemed to run contrary to “Freedom” philosophy. I ended up using spi mainly on 1 & 2 week trips when I could rig and leave it. Didn’t worry too much about uv on sleeve for a week or 2.
Regarding launching, jiving and retrieval, it is definitely the best thing since sliced bread. A joy for single or double handing.
Whenever the subject of gun mount spinnakers comes up I’m always one of the biggest cheerleaders for them. I think they’re great, it’s probably my favorite Freedom feature. I’m surprised they didn’t catch on more widely.
I leave mine in the bag, rigged, hooked to the bow pulpit all time. My original nylon bag got eaten by sunlight very quickly, I had a new one made in Sunbrella. It does have noticeably more friction (my next one might be Sunbrella with a nylon liner) but it works fine. To store it I just stuff the bag into its own mouth. I sewed a cover for it that hooks to the bow pulpit, covers everything up from sunlight and keeps rain out of the mouth of the bag. I leave all the rigging in place as well, just like any other running rigging. The pole stays in the gunmount and lays on the lifeline when not in use. It not only isn’t in the way, it makes a really great lifeline, if anything I’d love to have a giant, solid lifeline on the other side, too. From fully stored to flying is something like 5 minutes. Storing it at the end of the day is another 5 minutes.
I can see the argument that a lot of lines for it are always running across the deck, cluttering up the foredeck, whether the sail is being used or not. They also present a bit of danger; I warn people new to my boat that those lines are a trip hazard or can roll underfoot and cause a fall. That has merit but my counter argument is that it’s a SAILBOAT, I’ll make those concessions for really great sailing.
I really don’t see any other downwind/offwind sail being as easy or as versatile. A gunmount chute will go from 60 apparent on one tack all the way around to 60 apparent on the other tack with no dead spots anywhere. One person sets, flys and douses it, all (well,…usually all) from the cockpit. It’s pretty hard to have a spinnaker disaster with one.
“Different boats, different long splices” and all, I’m just offering a bit to the discussion but, if a gunmount fits your boat, I think it’s the best option. They are easy, effective and great fun.
I am single handing my F38, which will involve races in and offshore San Francisco Bay. This often means high winds (20+ k) that can be tame one minute and blasting the next, as well as variable sea state with short, choppy white caps on the bay and rollers offshore. I have an asym spinnaker now that is in a sock and takes 2 to handle. The boat is perfectly balanced with the spinnaker in 10 knots, but anything more than that, and I’m afraid that my autopilot and I would be in trouble. After seeing the videos on the gun mount spinnys, I am completely sold on them and it’s great to hear how others are making them work.
Rick, I am originally from Tallahassee and will be visiting family there December 12-16. I hope this is not too forward of me to ask, but would you be willing to show me how you set up your spinnaker so I can take measurements and pictures? I have some pictures that Teke’s Pride has posted, but that’s an F21, so I would think it would be quite a bit different. I would bring a copy of your “Gunmount Spinnaker Instructions” to help me follow along. This is an amazingly detailed document. Many thanks for writing that up!
If anyone is not using their gunmount pole and spinnaker, I would love to talk with you about buying it!
Cheers all,
Carliane
Not forward at all, messing with the boat is probably what I’d be doing anyway. I’m a gunmount true believer and wouldn’t pass up a chance to preach the gospel. 
The boat is about 40 minutes south of Tallahassee at Shell Point. We can run the chute up and down at the dock or go for a short sail.
Does your boat have the reinforced bow pulpit for the gunmount? That part would be a little tough to add but, you can’t find the rest, it seems to me that a good welding shop could fabricate it fairly easily. Someone here wrote a really good post about relining the gunmount sleeve with plastic pipe. That would be a good bit of data for a fabricator.
As far as I know, an F32 and a F38 use the same length pole (mine is 18 feet.) Do you (or another F38 owner) know this for sure?
PM me, we’ll trade phone and email info and set something up.
Yes, mine has the reinforced pulpit. I’d need to get the rest machined. I wonder if the asym spinny that I have would work for the gunmount? I’ll have to measure it.
Thanks, Rick, for offering to raise the chute! That would be great to see it fly. I’ll send you my contact info.
Rick,
Reviving this old thread with a couple of questions for you re the gunmount spinnaker.
I am on a very slow road to equipping my boat with the gun but need to amp it up in the coming months. I purchased a reinforced pulpit with gunmount plate from a guy parting out an F30 on the east coast. (I sail and F30) so I have that bit in storage. The pulpit will have to be modified due to different footprint aft, but that is a straightforward welding job. The next most difficult bit is the pole. There is a fellow selling a 20 foot spin pole out here on the West Coast. I need to call about diameter but my guess is it will be fairly robust. Is there any guideline for length of the pole? I have heard 18’ on a 32 so I would guess 20’ would be OK? Of course trimming it down would be doable too. Thoughts?
Then there is the gunmount tube/ rotating bolt assembly which I can have fabbed out of SS. This seems not too challenging. Archive posts indicate this should be sized to allow for PVC sleeve inside the SS tube.
Finally I would have the sail and sock fabricated, rig up the pole. install a few bits of deck hardware and, theoretically, be in business.
Looking at the gun mount pulpit, the space forward of the gun plate seems fairly compact, obviously the sail has to be retrieved through his aperture but it looks pretty tight.
Mike -
The spinnaker launches and is retrieved behind of the gun-mount tube, not in front of it. There is a lot more room there.
Note that I split this segment of posts off of a topic titled “Freedom Yachts” in “Random Chatter”, renamed it to “Gun Mount Spinnakers” and moved it to “Rigging and Sails”, which I hope should make it much easier for people to find.
– Geoff
Hi Mike,
There was another thread here about rigging on a gun mount spinnaker and I always meant to participate in that but life has taken some funny bounces lately and I just never quite got around to it. I’ll try to take some pictures later this week of the set up I have.
It would seem to me that if you can get the reinforced pulpit, the rest of the fabrication should be very straightforward. The pole is really just a capped-off aluminum tube with some padeyes on the ends, a fab shop could do this in an hour.
This is just a seat of the pants feel for this, I definitely don’t know this for sure, but while it’s just an aluminum tube, it could be that a gun mount spinnaker pole is a thicker walled tube than a standard spinnaker pole. A standard pole only has a compression force on it, a gun mount pole has an actual bending force from the midpoint to the ends. I will see whether there is some way of measuring mine. Again, it’s very possible that I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, they might be exactly the same.
The pole on my Hoyt 32 is 18 feet long. Sailor-me sees small advantages to going longer but engineer-me starts wondering about clumsiness and additional bending forces, though you should take that advice to be worth exactly what you paid for it. My only strong opinion about length is that I wish mine were about 6 inches longer only because then it would reach the second lifeline stanchion and I could tie it down more securely while stored.
Your project seems very doable and I’ll help you how I can.
The pole on my 1986/87 F-30 is a tapered one exactly 16-feet long.
I store it wedged in the pulpit in front and tied to a SS antenna mount attached to one of the stanchions.
Rv,
So the sail is retrieved aft of the pole? If I understand you correctly then yes that would be much easier. Not only is the pulpit top more open aft but you haven’t got to squeeze through the reinforcing pulpit legs. Makes sense. Not sure why I concluded the sail had to be retrieved forward of the pole.
The pics is excellent, really helps visualize the rig. I wonder where Freedom Yachts sourced that tapered pole? I had a 25 many years ago which was equipped with the gun mount - I have since forgotten most of the rigging detail but i do recall a big untaperd pole was used, so I know it is doable with a standard tube.
Mike
Geoff, thanks, that is really helpful.
Mike
Another thought I had was purchasing a couple lengths of carbon fiber tubing such as
http://www.rockwestcomposites.com/browse/round-carbon-fiber-tubing/unidirectional-carbon-tubing
and joining them together to achieve the required pole size. Kind of pricey though.
Yet another idea is I own a couple of CF windsurfing masts which are are strong as heck!! Additional masts can be had cheap on the used market and are engineered to be separated into sections. I would almost be tempted to kludge a tapered pole out of a couple of windsurfer masts. Fixed diameter pole in the middle joined to two tapered sections on either end. Wonder if that would be feasible? If all I need is 16 feet then I could use the stronger sections of the masts to build a tapered pole.
I’ve seen F-32s with non tapered aluminum gun mount poles.
When Cascade Yachts went bankrupt there was a 20’ tapered pole like a gun mount pole there that the Owner said was used by many yachts, not necessarily Freedoms as spinnaker poles. He was stressed out and refused to give me a price when I asked “how much?” So I think they are around.
Perhaps welding two tapered aluminum or carbon fiber flagpoles or light poles together with a straight section in the center would work. But are they strong enough? It might take a naval architect to know.
Maybe the ubiquitous “Ask Paul Dennis” is the answer!
There is also a u-tube video of a Brit laying up a smallish carbon fiber spinnaker pole in his living room. The Admiral in my house would have a fit.