The kayak catamaran is dangerously close to becoming a reality. I’ve been juggling over a dozen big projects this year so this one had to come together much slower than I would like, but I finally got all the bits together and hopefully we can take it out for sailing trials tomorrow.
The attachment system here started out as a way to add a removable back rest to my nesting canoes, and then I decided to put another one upfront so I could do a paddle float rescue in the canoes, and then I realized that all I had to do is put boards underneath the loops and I’ve got a little canoe catamaran! So that’s how the canoe catamaran was born, and after a couple years of design evolution it actually works surprisingly well.
Liz and I have taken the canoe catamaran down whitewater rivers and sailing down wind, and my students have enjoyed it with their kids, but canoes are relatively limited in the conditions they can handle so it was only a matter of time to see if I could add the same system to my kayaks for more exciting shenanigans.
I had to design a new version of the F1 kayak and build 3 iterations just to get to a deck geometry where the spare paddle, the sailing system, and the catamaran system would all interface cleanly without tripping over each other, and I’m still pretty intimidated by the amount of things I still have to test.
On these boats alone I have two different types of plastic wear plates, four different types of bungee, two alternate front deck catamaran board positions, two variations on my sail system, and soon two different types of rudders. And then I have to test all those things in different combinations and different conditions with different gear loads to find out what works best and to discover any potential safety issues.
Oh yeah, and I have to do all this on two sets of kayaks to test the flat deck catamaran versus the ridged deck catamaran. Could it work? Probably. Can I get it to work well enough to release a plan set before I run out of time and money? Hopefully!
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