After twenty - five years of competitive sailing I was kind of happy not to worry about a sail but people seem to enjoy it so... I whipped up a spinnaker rig for a canoeist who did not want to portage a mast. When he wanted to sail he cut down a sapling and fastened the halyard block to the top. He then raised his sail when he needed it and threw the sapling in the bush at the next portage. Like all simple things some people could not resist carbon fiber masts etc. Most liked the simplicity of the spinnaker over other rigs and learned to live with off wind sailing. For more extended cruising in kayaks and canoes my customer felt it would not hurt to be able to sail closer to the wind since he traveled on lakes and through lots of islands where the wind changes direction often an rapidly making putting up and taking down the sail a bit of a pain. Being cheap we decided not to buy a new sail and rig. We installed a"clew" in the middle of the spinnaker with a tack line to the mast. Downwind he freed the tack line to use the sail as a spinnaker. Reaching he pulled in the tack line and folded the sail in on itself like a crude Ljungstrom rig. He claimed he could sail a bit into the wind even without lee boards and this allowed him to sail between islands. He used it without a rudder but if if one wnated to do a lot more sailing a rudder (and possibly leeboards) would make sense with this kind of rig. The Ljungstrom rig allows reduction of sail area by half when reaching or sailing into the wind. One can also rig a roller furling system that allows you to get the sail completely out of the way quickly. You still have a mast to fool with and I don't think the Ljungstrom rig has as much efficiency as some rigs but if sailing isn't the primary objective it seems to do the job cheaply and simply enough. I wish I could tell the curious where to find out more about the Ljungstrom rig but I can't. I think I read about it in British yachting magazine some years back. If I recall correctly some one had developed a more complex system with twin booms or something. Maybe Mark will have some thoughts on the pros and cons of the rig. I know of a fellow locally who has used a kite and he reports similar experiences to Matt's. It looked like fun to me when I saw it done but more trouble than it was worth. Maybe he just didn't have the hang of it. Cheers, John Winters Redwing Designs Web site address, http://home.ican.net/~735769 *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Dec 02 1999 - 04:51:53 PST
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