I don't have a whisker pole, but I sure wish I did. I had one on my first boat back in the 80's, but haven't had one since due to the expense. There used to be a company that made much less expensive poles; maybe Arco? But they don't seem to be around anymore. Forespar seems to be the most common choice.

Not that it matters, but a google search found the old brand of poles: AMCO. Found a couple entries that said that Forespar bought them out and the company no longer exists. That'll teach 'em for selling poles cheaper, eh???

I had a whisker pole on my last boat and used it a lot on the big genny when running wing-on-wing. It was a forespar line drive and loved it.
I'm hoping to add one on my C36 to use both with the 135 and the asymmetrical. Haven't heard too many comments on how they work with this boat though...

We've got one, it's a two piece forespar with a line drive. It works quite well with the 155% blown out genoa that we have. The lowers do restrict how far aft the pole will rotate, but it's a definite performance enhancement when sailing deep angles on our (currently) chute less boat.

Can I ask -- what size whisker pole do you use? Anyone have models handy? I'm patiently looking around for one used, but want to have a good idea of what I should be searching for

I'll check out the measurements on it this weekend and let you know.

Alex

I have a short, pin adjustable whisker pole that came with my boat. It is J-length, so is useable for PHRF racing. However, its not particularly useful with my 135 genny in most conditions.

The only time its really been useful was on a delivery home from a distance race where we had 20+ knots on the aft quarter all the way home. Motor sailing with the jib only rolled out for maximum projection (pole against the shrouds) we blasted 50+ NM's home doing 8+ knots all day.

The new pin adjustable pole from Forespar is interesting because it would be useful with a typical roller furling genoa, but I wonder how difficult it would be to deploy. My J-length pole is simple because you just attach it while the genoa is rolled in then roll out the sail with it attached.

Pushing out a 20+ foot pole with it attached to a jib sheet in order to fix the mast end would seems like it could be a challange.

[QUOTE=bboggs;16350]

Pushing out a 20+ foot pole with it attached to a jib sheet in order to fix the mast end would seems like it could be a challange.[/QUOTE]

Bill & others,

One trick I learned was to tie a loop of line through the clew of the jib and attach the pole to that line, rather than the jib sheet. There are two advantages to this. One, it won't slip down the jib sheet if the wind is light. Two, you can do a dip gybe of the jib by running the pole through behind the forestay without detaching the pole end from the clew (assuming the pole fits).

Our pole is a Forespar, and excluding the end pieces it's 11" long before it's extended, so I put it at about 20 feet long when it's fully extended.

I use something similar to Stu's loop trick, another couple of tricks we've picked up are: if we know we're going to use it before the sail's unfurled, then we'll clip it on before unfurling, and extend the pole as the sail is being unfurled. If we're already sailing then someone just has to be ready to ease the jib sheet as the pole is being extended. And if it's really breezy and we need to make some adjustments to the pole, I'm not opposed to partially furling the jib before moving up to the mast.