Whisker poles on a beam reach

[trswem]

Hello all. I have a new 125 hank on genoa, and I don't have genoa cars set up yet to appropriately trim the sail when on a beam reach. The track for the cars on my little boat are only about 12" long, really a joke, fixing that over the winter. This weekend I had a few hours of needing to beam reach in light winds, and I set up the whisker pole on the genoa and felt like I had good results, boat speed came up, sails looked happy. My question, I don't ever see whisker poles being described for this usage. So is this not a thing? Was there a better solution than the pole?

[i-Zapp]

we're certainly not experts but i've read/heard that the idea with the pole is to maximize projected sail area downwind and keep the sail from collapsing/flogging. for us, we only use the pole when running, usually when wing-on-wing. our 150 genoa fills nicely when on a beam reach.

[Jammer]

It would be most unusual to set the pole on a beam reach.


As you move off the wind, usually the first move is to let the genoa car move up on the track. Then at some point you might switch from the inside track to a track on the toerail (or a block at a fixed location on the toerail, depending on your setup)i. The whisker pole would be the last step.