Dual Radial Blooper

[Mike & Dawn]

Hi everyone! This is my first post. When we bought our 1974 Ericson 27 a year ago, we got a bunch of sails. We have sailed lot this summer learning the boat with the basic, 1, 2 & 3 genoas. We have a Dual Radial Bloooper (from 1978) that I am trying to figure how to use. No one I've talked to has heard of it. Does anyone have any ideas?

Mike

 

[sleather]

I assume you have a spinnaker, Bloopers were designed to fly "winged" out w/ the chute. There should be a deck fitting a few feet back from the jib tack, or maybe they used the jib tack.

They fell out of favor, as nobody goes directly downwind, racing, anymore.

 

[Mike & Dawn]

Yes, we have a spinnaker, but the spinnakler pole was UTL by the PO. So the Blooper would fly with the spinnaker?

 

[Kevin Johnston]

Blooper

Yes, I believe you would fly the Blooper at the same time with the Spinnaker, wing and wing, one on one side and one on the other. So, you would need to be going nearly downwind to make this sail set work.

 

[sleather]

Yup. This is a case where a picture would be worth a "K"words and you would have to dig "reeeealy" deep in old sail mags to find a photo. Try "google" blooper, that'll be a test.

UTL?

Forgot, WELCOME!!!!!

 

[Morgan Stinemetz]

About that blooper. Doubtless, it's about as old as the boat. Best place for it is in the bag, unless you have about four extra guys who know how to keep it and the chute flying. The sail and the concept are antiquity personified, sort of like when Dennis Conner was skinny. There have been so many improvements in sails and how to use them since your blooper was made that if you really can fly it you are probably too old to sail anyway.
Morgan Stinemetz

 

[sleather]

The sail and the concept are antiquity personified, if you really can fly it you are probably too old to sail anyway.

What does that say about US, who even know about it?

I'd give'r a go!

You could probably rig it as a "broad reachiing" staysail.

 

[treilley]

Some serious sail area! Spinaker and 2 bloopers?

 

[sleather]

Good for you! I see alot of those, pushing shopping carts @ the supermarket.

Can you imagine the number of lines to make that happen!

Actually I remember "bloopers" as being more slender, I think somebody is flying 3 chutes for the halibut.

Google "blooper sail"

Then, check out Litoralis video "bloopers" wild 470 stuff
& My Photo Gallery, boating bloopers(sick stuff) from SailNet

 

[Mike & Dawn]

I Googled and came up empty, must be older than the internet. UTL = unable to locate. A guy at the club said it could be a predecessor of a Gennaker. BTW the PO passed away and we bought the boat from his wife, he was the sailor. We got a spinnaker, Blooper and a whisker pole. I was going to try the blooper at the jib tack, raised with the spinnaker halyard, and sheets.

 

[Morgan Stinemetz]

Mike,
If memory serves, the IOR boats that were all the rage when your boat was built had small mains and you flew the blooper on the same side as the main when you were flying the chute. It gave better balance to the boat downwind. On the other hand, to mess with something like that now--when it is not necessary--seems to me to be an exercise in futility, sort of like sex with a woman who hasn't bathed in six months. Not much fun either.
Morgan Stinemetz

 

[windjunkee]

we have a blooper but have only flown it once. I have discovered it is for sailing DDW. It is shaped weird, as in skinny at the top and fully, almost kidney shaped, at the bottom. The idea is to have it billow out and catch the wind under the main and ideally, it is flown in big air situations. It supposedly has a tendancy to stabilize the roll that you get in heavy air DDW.
We fly it on the spare halyard, with the sheets just going back to the primaries rather than our regular secondary spin winches.

Jim McCone
Voice of Reason E-32-2 Hull #134
Redondo Beach, CA

 

[Seth]

Car cover

That pic with 3 sails is 2 kites and an A-kite I think- but none of them are bloopers.

Morgan is right- they were built to be flown opposite a sym spinnaker at app wind angles deeper than 160 or so. The theory was that for IOR type boats with very high aspect rigs and tall skinny mains, they would help with overall sail area, "stabilize" the boat from rolling in big air (never really worked out that way), and probabaly most important (and the only tangible benefit they provided), they would help "push" you a little deeper-so that as long as it was not slowing you down (which they often did if not flown perfectly), you could "net" slightly better downwind VMG-sort of like induced leeway-a good thing when working downhill.

One key reason they were used on race boats for a while was that they were rated as headsails under the IOR-not spinnakers, so we thought we were getting "free' sail area downwind...

Having said that, it is established that they are more trouble than they were worth-rarely helped performance, and limited maneuverability. My "proof" for this as being "established" is because us sailmakers stopped selling them-even for those who asked for them in the years following their "fall from grace". As a "recovering" sailmaker, I can tell you that if we felt we could make $ with those sails (and still look at ourselves in the mirror), we would have.

It was our industry that really first came to terms with what a waste of time they were/are..


They DO superficially resemble cruising Spinnaker/Gennakers, and can be used (no pole needed) for this purpose if you are goofing around. They are not nearly as good, because they are shaped SUPER full for the original purpose (DDW)-so at angles closer than about 140-150 app (if using it as a gennaker) it is too deep to be effective at typical sailing angles-especially when compared to a real A-spin or cruising spin/gennaker. So don't expect it to be a substitute for the real thing-they are designed totally differently.

Use it for something else-but if you want to fool with it more, I can give you some specific instructions on how to fly it opposite the kite-just let me know.

Cheers
S

 

[Chris Miller]

I bet it would make a really nice sunshade for the cockpit...
Chris

 

[sleather]

Sea anchor?

 

[JMS]

Here’s one -> the boat is a Choate 40 c.1982.

 

[Seth]

Arrggh

Looks like the Choate 40 from Dana Point..Was it Audacious? Either way-that pic gave me flashback I am just now getting over! No more Blooper talk, please!!! It hurts so much to remember!

The worst job back then was being the guy who had to play the halyard-the trick was to ease the sheet and halyard to get the stupid things out and away from the kite and mainsail as much as possible, but not have it drag in the water-what a P.I.T.A.!

I'll take today's gybing angles, thank you!!!

Signed,
a sailing :nerd:

 

[JMS]

Looks like the Choate 40 from Dana Point..Was it Audacious? Either way-that pic gave me flashback I am just now getting over! No more Blooper talk, please!!! It hurts so much to remember!

The worst job back then was being the guy who had to play the halyard-the trick was to ease the sheet and halyard to get the stupid things out and away from the kite and mainsail as much as possible, but not have it drag in the water-what a P.I.T.A.!

I'll take today's gybing angles, thank you!!!

Signed,
a sailing :nerd:

Good eye, Seth -> it is Audacious.

P.I.T.A. is a pretty apt description. I can almost hear the debate going on: “Is it helping us or hurting us?...Jeez, will someone puhleeeez pay attention to the spinnaker trim.....OK, let’s get that POS down NOW!”

 

[Seth]

Exactly.....

That's about how it usually went!

Cheers,
S

 

[bbboat]

Can you recut it?

We have one of these monsters. Put it up on not quite DDW without a spinnaker just for the fun of it to see if it would serve as a drifter. Wind kicked up a few points and the lines nearly took my hands off (only 3 of us on the boat). Funky shape.

I'm wondering if it can be recut - perhaps chop of the aft part of the kidney shape to make it more of a triangle to use as a cheap asymmetrical?