Please check the captions and see if they're accurate,

 

 

To be pedantic, that's a whisker pole in the third caption. 

 

I call it a spinnaker, but the thing in the second photo is technically a "poleless spinnaker," or a "tacking spinnaker."  The spinnaker has a tack and a clew that are not interchangeable;  you secure it to the bow and pole it out with an ordinary whisker pole.  Obviously this is 20 times easier to set than a traditional spinnaker.  To make things more weird, in that extreme light air I tacked the spinnaker to the bow pulpit to get it out to windward a little more.  Not normally good practice as I think the spinnaker could tear off the pulpit in a big puff.

 

 

and I'm wondering, in the third shot, is that a vang or an adjustable preventer to the boom on the left side of the pic (the red line)? Difficult to tell from the shot, and I don't mind showing my ignorance.

 

That's a boom vang.  And a preventer.  More about that in some later post.

 

Cheers,

John