How to use the Hobie 16 Spinnaker

Hello everyone! Hopefully someone on here has flown a spinnaker on the Hobie 16 and might be kind enough to provide me with some help. I just received my spinnaker kit from Hobie a few weeks ago and have installed it myself. I put a mast tang 54" (hole to hole) above the shroud tang that I attached a swivel block to.

I've taken the boat out and turned down wind, pulled the chute out so that the head was tight to the block above and the tack was out to the tip of the spin pole. I noticed as I headed up on the wind that the leading edge of the spinnaker would kind of curl around, it is very strange and doesnt look right at all. I also have to keep the sheet pulled in all the way, which causes the foot and leech to be tight. Ocassionally the spinnaker just goes crazy and flaps around spastically and I have to ease the sheet out and the trim it back in while turning almost dead downwind again in order to stop it from doing that.

I have read up some recently on asymmetrical spinnakers and they talk about letting the tackline out some, but if I do this, the head will also fall down some as well. Is this something standard to do? I have played with that a little, and have managed to make that curl go away by doing this, but then I can barely turn upwind at all, and the spinnaker still loves to flap around like crazy and trying to jerk my arm out of socket.

I would love and greatly appreciate any help anyone can give! Thank you!

How much luff tension do you have? Measure the luff of the spinnaker, and the distance to the bail and the block on the pole. That distance should be about 5% less. As in the spinnaker is smaller than the hole it fills.

Or, hoist it and grab on to the luff, you shouldn't be able to rotate it more than ninety degrees. Either way you check it, the only way to really adjust it is by raising/lowering the pole, or the bail. Then you can fine tune it with the luff cord, if it has one.

How hard are you sheeting the main sail? Could be the luff is loose to start with and being too soft on the main sheet tension is allowing the mast to bend too much. I gotta imagine rig tension comes into play here as well.

Dropping off a bit of the tackline allows you to carry the kite to a higher angle.