My life is lived in tiny adventures. A couple nights ago it was 15 minutes upwind and 7 minutes back, this time with Liz and I sailing separately.
The easiest way to sail these canoes with the rowing rig attached is just to let the oars trail in the water leaning back in the outrigger like an armchair. In super light wind that slows you down by about a half a mile per hour but it doesn’t seem to change much once you can see the wind on the water. For the most part we just steer with the sails which allows for a surprising range of course correction just by playing the sheet. If a more dramatic turn is needed a quick hand on the oar works great. It’s especially fun to see how tightly you can work through an obstacle course just steering with the sail.
The wind here is probably around 5 to 8 mph so we are going between 2.5 and 4 mph except for the one 12mph gust which pushed us up to around 6, which is probably the top end for this size of boat.
Any water or wind more serious than this and we’d have to start thinking about float bags, oar tethers, and rescue strategies.
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