Tested the new canoe catamaran, oar, and sail rigs on the river last night. It’s very easy for canoe rigs to become unusable contraptions so I’m pleased that this whole setup felt tight and clean on the water.
I got the idea for the new catamaran boards from Uwe, who built a couple of my canoes. The ball bungee attachment is something that I originally abandoned because my other method is a lot less flexy, but these are also much faster to build and install in seconds rather than minutes, so I thought I would experiment with them a little more. Flex was still acceptable even in heavy cross chop.
The new 1.7 m ripstop nylon sails with carbon fiber masts are feather light and haven’t broken yet. We will see if that is still true in a few weeks.
The big winner here is the rowing outriggers which not only make a perfect backrest/armrest, but also allow one of the oars to be shipped between the canoes for steering. I’ve had fantasies about steering these canoes with pinned oars for a long time but this is the first version of the idea that actually works really well.
We sailed about 10 miles in three hours with variable winds between 6 to 10 mph and maybe a couple gusts up to 12. Top speed was around 6 mph on a couple of surfs but generally we were chugging along at about 2.5-4.5.
Course is limited to downwind up to just a bit higher than a broad reach.
The ride was mostly dry, except for one wave where three power boats came together and splashed about a quarter of a cup of water into Tom’s boat.
Set up and breakdown time on both ends was about 10 minutes which is pretty civilized.
Overall the setup seems pretty well matched these conditions although I’m sure at some point I’ll fill them with float bags and do something inadvisable.
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