D.B Cooper wrote:
I seek to use a strong golf umbrella as a sail.The down side is having a 1.5 lb extra weight.Can anyone think of any other uses for around camp to help justify the extra weight?
Oh gawd, downwind sailing, a well loved way to travel that is dear too my heart.
We used golf unbrelllas to downwind sail in tandem canoes for years. For starters, it only works well in a tandem, where the bowman can manage the umbrella and the stern hang out on a paddle rudder. In that guise it works very well, with the bow doing little work.
It doesn’t work as well in a solo canoe, and not at all bow backwards. A solo paddler needs hands for both the umbrella and for the paddle rudder. And to be effective and directionally controllable a downwind sail need to be at least a couple feet forward of center hull, somewhere in the front third of the hull works best.
Think about the physics of a downwind sail behind center hull. Oh my, that got ugly fast.
In a solo canoe, at least one without a rudder, the “sail” operation needs to be as hands free as possible; you will need both hands to paddle rudder, or oh-shit sailing brace, or simply to hold the paddle as a comfort totem when things get rocking.
Even though I have downwind sails on most of our tripping boats I still bring an umbrella. Nice for rainy trips to the thunderbox or etc. Nice when I’m dry under the tarp and just need to mosey over to get something in the vestibule without putting donning wet raingear. Nice when it’s just drizzling and I’m ducking out from tarp cover attending a sputtering campfire.
Hell, while paddling if it starts to pour buckets and promises to be brief I’ll pull over in an eddy for a few minutes and put the umbrella up, especially if I’m not already raingear clad. First person who joins me can lean in and share the umbrella cover, the rest of you are on your own.
Prospector16 wrote:
Just buy a canoe sail - they have come down in price a lot in the last year or so and you should be able to find one well under 100 bucks
P16, I had an opportunity to test all of the (then) available downwind sails some years ago. Including a hand held Quiver Sail that required post-spinach Popeye arms to hold erect. That one was a huge fail.
Acknowledging the caveat I am not interested in sailing up-wind with a mast, sheets and lines and fair leads, lee board and tiller. I don’t need to be zig-zagging tacks out into the middle of a lake and going 20 miles to make 10. And then find that the wind died and have to pull over somewhere to disassemble it all. Plus those types of “upwind” sails rigs, like Flat Earth or Falcon sail, get pricey.
https://flatearthkayaksails.com.au/https://www.falconsails.com/Those deserve their place with adventure racers, but less so with trippers.
I know folks who have DIY’ed their own masted (leeboard, tiller, etc) upwind sails and eventually, repeated-redesigned, kinda sorta still-needs-work got it mostly right. For my simplistic downwind breeze capture, screw all that.
The flexible wand umbrella-ish bowl type “sails” were the least effective of everything we tested; half the sail area was blocked by my body, and they were not exactly hands free. Even the smallest (least expensive) WindPaddle sail runs $115+.
https://www.nrs.com/product/1670/windpa ... gLmavD_BwEI know there are cheaply made $15 WindPaddle knockoffs:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Wind-Sail-Fo ... gIMtfD_BwEP16, have you actually tried one? I’m kinda thinking there’s a reason those are $15. Spend some time even simplistic downwind sailing and let us know what you think.
The smallest (1 sqm) Pacific Action Sail runs $325. While the PA sail was the most easily and effectively angled and controllable of the downwind sails, it required sheets, fairleads and cam cleats, and some hull outfitting.
http://topkayaker.com/index.php?main_pa ... hg7q2p9gg2The best of the downwind lot, for my downwind tripping purposes, was the hands-free Spirit Sail, now sadly discontinued
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU2mE83Gi0MI love the hand free simplicity of the mid-sized Spirit Sail. I did not so much enjoy stupidly erecting the large size Spirit Sail in heavy winds, and having no way to stop-this-ride other than running the speeding boat up on some shallow beach.
Mike M Sailing 01 by
Mike McCrea, on Flickr
I got better at sail management, and only did that a couple of times.