Re: [Paddlewise] kayak sails

At 22:46 2/04/98 -0500, you wrote:
>At 07:20 PM 4/2/98 -0500, Mark Balogh wrote:
>>Ari, Dave and others that replied,
>>Thanks for pointing out the source of the ruckus.  I am sorry if my
>>posting may have seemed comercial.  
>>Good kayaking and canoeing to you all
>>Mark
>
>OK now that thats out of the way how do you compare a parafoil kite of the
>same sq. ft.
>as a sail in performance , handling and easy of use and storage? You can
>let your prejudice
>toward sails show here a little. I did not compare price because thats not
>fair.That is in a 
>hundred words or less with out (ha ha ) promoting your product. I have done
>quite a bit of
>kayak kiting but not with a sail. My kites are 8&16 sq. ft.
>
>Dana

Dana,

I played with two parafoils during a trip last August. The trip was ten
days of paddling in the Whitsunday Island group in Queensland. August in
the (Southern Hemisphere) tropics brings steady, moderate trade winds from
the south-east.

One paddler in the group had a simple triangular sail of about 0.5 sq m
(about 5.3 sq ft in old units). His boat is a long, very hard-tracking boat.

I brought two (borrowed) parafoils. One is supposedly specially designed
for sea kayaking. It is about 1.3 sq m (14 sq ft). The other is designed as
a child's toy and is about 0.5 sq m. My boat doesn't track at all and gets
blown very quickly leeward. When heeled over under sail, it is even worse.

The kayak sailor with the simple triangular sail was able to sail from
downwind to a broad reach, with ease. He sailed a lot, during this trip.

The smaller parafoil was OK on my kayak, but did not move me anywhere near
as fast as the sail moved my companion.

The larger parafoil pulled really hard. The problem was that the bridle was
not right, and I was unwilling to change it. The parafoil flew very high;
it gave lots of lift but very little traction. On the one day when I was
best able to fly it from a beach start, it lifted my boat enough that I was
unable to surf the following sea. My companions without sails or parafoils
were faster, because they could catch the waves!

I liked the ease of flying the parafoil. Once it is up, in a decent wind,
it exerts no heeling forces on the kayak, and it is well out of the reach
of the paddle. Deployment is more of an issue. Pulling in the larger
parafoil took several minutes. Those several minutes can make a peaceful,
quiet anchorage seem like a very busy harbour. All those things to collide
with. Looking back, I would like to try the larger parafoil again, and try
a few changes to the bridle.

The parafoils were a nuisance in light or fluky winds. Neither would
re-launch from the water, and I had to dry them by holding them up in the
breeze.

The point is: a parafoil looks like a good way to go, but its setup is
finicky.

The best kite rig that I have ever seen is the Wipika. It looks magic. I'm
not sure about the deployment time (it uses a pump to inflate the spars),
nor about the size (5 sq m - about 50 sq ft !!) or about the price (about
$700 ?) but it still looks good. Check http://www.wipika.com

There, that's not _my_ commercial plug!

On the whole, I like the ease-of-use of a simple sprit-sail or similar. I
will have a chance to make comparisons on the coming weekend. The NSW Sea
Kayak Club has its big semiannual get-together down at Honeymoon Bay on the
NSW South Coast. We would expect 50 to 70 people and nearly as many boats.
About 10% of members have a sail-rig of some sort, maybe even more than
10%. The sail race was a great attraction last November. You're all invited!

I'll may post a little more after the weekend.

Andrew
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