Spinnaker???

I can't help too much. I also bought stuff made of spinnaker fabric more than five years ago from Gossamer Gear, and it was decent. Yes, a little noisy. I was impressed enough that I purchased some extra fabric at that time and made my own stuff. I found it a lot easier to work with compared to silnylon. I have only a few square feet of it left, so that will likely end up in small items like the hip belt pouch that I reported on recently.

–B.G.–

Yeah, there is still some .75oz/yd spinnacker out there. Generally it is not too good for waterproofness, though. It needs to be fully coated with some mineral spirits and caulk. This brings the weight up to about 1oz/yd. To my mind, this is not enough to justify the increase in price, around 10/yd, over regular silnylon (around 8-10/yd.) You loose some strength, and in a 16 oz tarp, you might save 2-3 ounces. Soo, it sort of lost favor with good .54oz/yd cuben being more or less standard for SUL tarps.

I built a cat curve tarp out of spinnaker at the "height" of it's BPL popularity in '06 and it performed flawlessly for me during a 61 day thru-hike. It was a great fabric for it's time but it's not a super optimal choice anymore for a few reasons.

1. cuben fiber performs far better, is far more waterproof, and is much more durable
2. silnylon is slightly heavier but is more waterproof, stronger, and less expensive

Just last week I sewed up a ski pack and employed a combination of spinnaker (white) and silnylon (blue) for the cinch collar. I'm curious what the life span of it will end up being.

I have two beautiful catenary panels and beak sections from the original stock of Gossamer Gear SpinnTwinn tarps sitting in my sewing area that I've been meaning to sew up since around '08 (yikes) but haven't done anything with yet.

I have about a yard and a half of the white spinnaker pictured in the ruck above that I have no purpose for just yet.