5 EXPERT TIPS

Hamble-based Dave Swete is one of the most in-demand professional sailors in the UK. He tells Andy Rice his five top tips for a safe and rapid spinnaker ‘string drop’ using modern takedown systems.

Dinghies like the 505 have been using chutes to ‘string drop’ their spinnakers into the boat for decades. However, the string drop wasn’t seen in big boats until the latter days of the Version 5 IACC yachts, which last contested the America’s Cup in Valencia 2007. Many of those same America’s Cup sailors and sailmakers