Homemade canoe rig works great!
Well, I finally did it. I got a bit of a start on my vacation by going trailer camping up north, where I got the fever to finally make a canoe sail rig.
I found some right nice seasoned spars out in the woods, oak and maple. Mast, yard and sprit. Nautical terms! Each about 8 feet long for stowability aboard while out to sea.
So I rigged and trimmed and got everything attached to canoe and spars that was needed, plus I cut and taped up a nice blue polytarp sail and I was done! It took 8 hours total.
The canoe required a mast-step to be glued to hull. 2×6 Mast thwart across with hole. 1x12x48 Leeboard and 2×6 thwart. 2×6 Paddle-steer mount and thwart. It took $25 in fittings from the hardware store. Angle-steel brackets were used to make thwarts, with easy wingnuts. About 100′ line total (1/4-5/16″ braided nylon utility rope). Six different lines. Lots of zipties and duct tape. It seems like maybe too many lines, but I tried to make the rig look like photos I’ve seen of them and other similar rigs.
The rig is a sliding gunter rig leg-o-mutton spritsail. 50 sq-ft sail maybe.
It sailed fine. Not much breeze that day though. However, that’s good for a trial run.
I’d never actually seen or sailed such a rig before. But I made some changes while sailing and got so I can stow and rig while under way.
It needs about six easy fixes to optimize. (Sail needs to ride higher, foot needs to be cut higher angle, too, to keep boom out of water. I had more droop than planned in the blocks and pivot of the mast/yard, so I’ll shorten that gap to make rig taller. Leeboard flexes too much at pivot. Rudder seems to easy to lose, too tough to control.)
PS: Question about the rudder! Does anyone know a good way to set one up? I’m actually using a paddle with an extension ziptied to it at an angle. I have a thwart near the stern with 3×5 notch cut into either side that I drop the paddle rig into depending on tack. Putting paddle into offside notch helps comeabout. I’d heard this was a good and original set-up. But the paddle wants to roll. And it wants to pop up and out. Help?
