Yesterday I finally had a chance to try the catamaran system on a pair of kayaks. This setup is kind of a worst-case scenario because the bungees aren’t as strong as I normally use, only the back board bridges the width of the kayaks, and one of the kayaks is retrofitted rather than native to the system. But my logic here is that if this works reasonably well on flat water (it did) there’s a strong chance that set up properly it will work well in rough water.
It’s been a long journey to get here, I built four modified boats before arriving at one that I liked well enough to try. Now that I have proof of concept there’s an even longer road ahead. I need to change the board spacing and length, refit with heavier bungees and proper fasteners. I’ve also decided I’m going to change the bungee/board interface. This works well on the pack canoes but I need something a little different for the kayaks.
I’m going to install a rudder on the smaller kayak, and then it’s just a matter of slowly working up from flat water to sailing in 35 mph winds and 6 foot waves. If it doesn’t tear itself apart in those conditions, I’ll build a brand-new pair of boats with whatever modifications seem necessary and then I’ll spend two weeks running down wind with full touring load in rough conditions, and then if it survives that journey I’ll consider it safe enough for an official release.
This entire system (including the sails) has been in use on my pack canoes for over three years, but the reason it’s taking so much longer to adapt to the kayaks is because the conditions it could be used in are much more extreme. I have to be 100% confident that it’s not gonna fail unexpectedly.
The kayak modifications themselves are fairly simple though so I’m going to add that to the kayak building course right away so anyone who wants to retrofit this later will have the appropriate reinforcements.
We flew the drone quite a bit yesterday so I’ll share some more footage and thoughts tomorrow.
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