A bunch of people have asked how the kayak catamaran performs on different points of wind so here’s a few video clips.
Here we are sailing through Hood River and the usual gauntlet of interesting wind powered contraptions. The wind is blowing about 12 to 16 gusting to 20 which is nice conditions. Plenty of push but without things getting too bouncy or crazy. The sails are one square meter each.
In the first clip we’re running down wind, the second is a broad reach, in the third we are beam to the wind and you can see the power starting to fall off because the sails don’t have any real shape (yet), but we are still clipping along. Then we turn back down wind where you can see the effect of the sandbar underneath us starting to drag down the speed a bit.
Could you do better than this? Definitely a little better into the wind with a lot more sail R&D and a more difficult sail build. And I’m sure I will add that to the system at some point but for a flat cut sail that anybody with a sewing machine and make in a couple hours I think this is pretty decent performance.
There are a few kayaking sail rigs out there that will go to windward but the cost and the complexity of that kind of system just isn’t worth it for me. I feel like if you want to head into the wind you’re much better off in a craft designed for that sort of thing.
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