Kite talk, not exactly pillow talk
Chris,
Since you asked, let me say this about that:
I am not a huge fan of the Evil Blue Empire (North)-not because of poor sail design or qualilty, but because they seem to typically have poor service and committment to "our" part of the market. I usually see unhappy N clients because they are more focused on the really big ticket boats, leaving guys like us to fend for ourselves.
Deep Runner? Why? I would prefer an AP shape-these run well and reach quite well also. The little Flasher can be your "upwind" spinnaker and you can use it when the breeze is piping up. The difference between a good AP sail and a runner is small when running, bigger when reaching-so the AP is more versatile.
On the subject of wanting a symetrical for running (I have droned on ad nauseum about this, but here we go again), my question is:WHY? Why would you want a less efficient, harder to handle sail on the boat? Remember, A-sails are NOT reaching sails by definition-only reaching A-sails are. An A-sail designed as a runner or AP will always be faster than a symetrical (because it is a better airfoil-with a real leading edge and a real trailing edge).
So, if it were my boat, I would have ONLY A-sails on board-I would have a small flat reacher, and an AP, and maybe a runner if I had the extra bucks. ALL of these are more versatile than the symetrical counterparts, and easier to fly. All spinnakers, symetrical or A-sails, can be reachers or runners, or AP, but the A-sails will always have a wider range, and when compared to a symetrical designed for the same function (and this is the key), are faster.
When sailing downwind with an A-sail (especially one designed for broad reaching or running), they will perform better with a pole-and are trimmed just like the symetrical-although they are gybed differently.
So, with your A-sails you can use the pole or not, and they work better with the snuffer, but yes, symetrical do work with snuffers, too.
Tri radial or crosscut? ALWAYS Tri-radial!!! This is because nylon sailcloth is all warp oriented-meaning the strongest threads are aligned with the warp-or the long direction. When you assemble a spinnaker in a crosscut style, you are asking the weaker threads (along the width) to carry the highest loads (up and down the luff and leech), while those beefy warp threads are now aligned with the girth of the sail, where there is much less load-so crosscut is a poor use of the fabric. A tri radial will last much longer, be stronger(for a given fabric) and hold its' shape much better.
A good example of A-sails going downwind was the Mac race 3 years ago on board the first ben 36.7 in Chicago-I did all the sails for this boat. Although it does not have a bowsprit and was not intended for A-sails, I built a full inventory of A-sails. This is a boat with a normal pole, fractional rig, in a light air downwind race. All bad for this type of boat. We were first in class and I think 6th or 7th overall out of 300 or so boats (the other top 15 spots overall were BIG boats!). The next year, when we had a class of them, we won again using an a-sail-and the second boat had the symetricals. Same boats, good crews, and they said they just could not get as deep or as fast as we were able to. It was close, but we definitely had the edge. They get even better in heavy air since they don't oscillate back and forth like the symetricals do in those conditions.
Not that I have an opinion....
S