Please check the captions and see if they're accurate,
To be pedantic, that's a whisker pole in the
third caption.
I call it a spinnaker, but the thing in the
second photo is technically a "poleless spinnaker," or a "tacking
spinnaker." The spinnaker has a tack and a clew that are not
interchangeable; you secure it to the bow and pole it out with an
ordinary whisker pole. Obviously this is 20 times easier to set than a
traditional spinnaker. To make things more weird, in that extreme light
air I tacked the spinnaker to the bow pulpit to get it out to windward a
little more. Not normally good practice as I think the spinnaker could
tear off the pulpit in a big puff.
and I'm wondering, in the third shot, is that a vang or an adjustable
preventer to the boom on the left side of the pic (the red line)? Difficult to
tell from the shot, and I don't mind showing my ignorance.
That's a boom vang. And a preventer.
More about that in some later post.
Cheers,
John
