Almost every production-built boat that PS editors and contributors go aboard these days has an inventory that includes an asymmetrical spinnaker. That isn’t a statement we could have made even five years ago. The increasing popularity of asymmetrical spinnakers on cruising boats is owed in part to technological advances in these products, the inherent performance and handling advantages over their symmetrical siblings, and the ongoing marketing efforts of many sailmakers.

The Swan 40 Blue Moon puts a Quantum asymmetrical spinnaker to work on San Francisco Bay.

Asymmetrical spinnakers aren’t a new phenomenon by any means. Pioneering sail designers like Ken Rose, Bruce Banks, and Peter Sutter were experimenting with these shapes well before many PS readers were born. However, the advent of asymmetrical spinnakers in the cruising…