Has anybody tried one of those round sails that the bow person holds or mounts in the bow? Any speed benefit in moderate winds--say 15kph? Is there a quality difference between brands? Thx
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Canoe sailing
- Thread starter jefffski
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We just use a large golfing umbrella, it works great but need to be windy not just breezy... And they serve multiple purpose, can be use to shade your cooler when in camp or at the lunch stop, can also be use as a rain umbrella for the wife and the kids pee brake, or give some privacy if no trees or bushes are available!!!
We have used the Wind Paddle Brand in the Cruiser and Adventure sizes.
They have been used on single kayaks, tandem kayak and tandem canoe.
They are well made; easy to mount, stow and deploy; lightweight and are really best for tandems with two people ( in our experience).
They have been used on single kayaks, tandem kayak and tandem canoe.
They are well made; easy to mount, stow and deploy; lightweight and are really best for tandems with two people ( in our experience).
In moderate winds, did you go faster than if you only paddled?
I used a Wind Paddle in adventure size on a long solo trip. It was a mixed bag. On a couple occasions it worked great and it was a welcome relief from paddling. Especially at the end of a long 30 mile day fighting the wind when I took a sharp turn to the east and was able to sail the last few miles.
It installs quickly, deploys quickly, and is light and compact so setting it up and portaging it aren't a big deal. I'd leave it tucked out of the way (but easily reachable from my seat) and it would take only a minute (literally) to clip it in and deploy if the wind was good. If the wind died or turned unfavorable it took even less time to fold it up. At that point I'd leave it clipped in place but stowed in case I needed it again before the next portage. There is enough adjustability built in that the wind doesn't have to be directly from the stern to work. That was better than I thought it would be. At the portage it fit perfectly in the outside pockets on a couple of my packs or else I'd just carry it by hand on a short one.
The bad news is that most of the time the wind isn't favorable. The worst is when it's almost favorable and you deploy the sail, get a good push for 2 minutes, and then the wind fails you. Repeat this over and over again until you get sick of it and forget about the sail. This seems to happen the most when the wind is moderate. It will blow strong enough for a few minutes and then slacken a little. Back and forth and back and forth. You don't notice it's doing that until you pop up the sail. It can also happen on smaller waters that are more protected and winding. The wind speed and direction can change often and suddenly, making for a frustrating experience.
It's also not very easy to hold the sail and steer with your paddle at the same time. It can be done but it's not ideal. Holding the sail and paddling at the same time is about impossible to do efficiently. I actually found it worked well to put the looped control line around the back of my head (where a hat would sit). This left both my hands free and worked well most of the time.
As for is it faster to paddle or sail in moderate winds I guess that depends on how fast you normally paddle. At 15kph I'd say you would most likely paddle faster than sail. Remember that as your forward speed increases the force of the wind on the sail decreases. If you're traveling 5kph in a 15kph tail wind then the sail is only "seeing" 10kph.
I think most of the downsides to the sail would be overcome by a tandem canoe. The bow paddler can deploy and control the sail while the stern paddler is free to paddle or make any corrections necessary. Same goes when it's time to stow the sail. Even solo it doesn't take long but when you find yourself in large white caps and rollers and decide it's too windy for the sail it's not very enjoyable to have to let go of the paddle in order to put the sail away, even if it does only take a few seconds.
I still don't know if I'd take the sail along on another solo trip or not. Of the 43 days I was on the water I can probably count on one hand how many times the wind was actually favorable for sailing and of those times I doubt any single event lasted for more than 45 minutes. But mentally they were a big boost and something to look forward to. The best was being able to sail upstream off and on for an afternoon.
Another reason to not leave it behind would be because I might not ever forgive myself if I wasn't able to take advantage of favorable sailing winds when I'm looking to cross a 30 mile wide lake.
Alan
It installs quickly, deploys quickly, and is light and compact so setting it up and portaging it aren't a big deal. I'd leave it tucked out of the way (but easily reachable from my seat) and it would take only a minute (literally) to clip it in and deploy if the wind was good. If the wind died or turned unfavorable it took even less time to fold it up. At that point I'd leave it clipped in place but stowed in case I needed it again before the next portage. There is enough adjustability built in that the wind doesn't have to be directly from the stern to work. That was better than I thought it would be. At the portage it fit perfectly in the outside pockets on a couple of my packs or else I'd just carry it by hand on a short one.
The bad news is that most of the time the wind isn't favorable. The worst is when it's almost favorable and you deploy the sail, get a good push for 2 minutes, and then the wind fails you. Repeat this over and over again until you get sick of it and forget about the sail. This seems to happen the most when the wind is moderate. It will blow strong enough for a few minutes and then slacken a little. Back and forth and back and forth. You don't notice it's doing that until you pop up the sail. It can also happen on smaller waters that are more protected and winding. The wind speed and direction can change often and suddenly, making for a frustrating experience.
It's also not very easy to hold the sail and steer with your paddle at the same time. It can be done but it's not ideal. Holding the sail and paddling at the same time is about impossible to do efficiently. I actually found it worked well to put the looped control line around the back of my head (where a hat would sit). This left both my hands free and worked well most of the time.
As for is it faster to paddle or sail in moderate winds I guess that depends on how fast you normally paddle. At 15kph I'd say you would most likely paddle faster than sail. Remember that as your forward speed increases the force of the wind on the sail decreases. If you're traveling 5kph in a 15kph tail wind then the sail is only "seeing" 10kph.
I think most of the downsides to the sail would be overcome by a tandem canoe. The bow paddler can deploy and control the sail while the stern paddler is free to paddle or make any corrections necessary. Same goes when it's time to stow the sail. Even solo it doesn't take long but when you find yourself in large white caps and rollers and decide it's too windy for the sail it's not very enjoyable to have to let go of the paddle in order to put the sail away, even if it does only take a few seconds.
I still don't know if I'd take the sail along on another solo trip or not. Of the 43 days I was on the water I can probably count on one hand how many times the wind was actually favorable for sailing and of those times I doubt any single event lasted for more than 45 minutes. But mentally they were a big boost and something to look forward to. The best was being able to sail upstream off and on for an afternoon.
Another reason to not leave it behind would be because I might not ever forgive myself if I wasn't able to take advantage of favorable sailing winds when I'm looking to cross a 30 mile wide lake.
Alan
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I had the opportunity, a dozen or so years ago, to test four different downwind sails for review. From least favorite to most favorite:
The Quiver Sail. A fairly large V sail, actually more of a \_/ sail, 50 inches tall by a massive 70 inches wide a across the top. It was a hand held sail. Popeye after spinach handheld maybe; that was a lot of sail to try to hand hold even in light winds. Long out of business.
The Wind Paddle. The Wind Paddle, at least compared to current model Windpaddles, did not get a fair shake. At the time Windpaddle was brand new and only offered one model. Which was not very big, and was designed to be hands held. Hands, both; at least a golf umbrella only takes one hand.
Plus the original Windpaddle was smaller than a golf umbrella, and even held full arms length away the bowmans body blocked much of the wind.
Windpaddle today has many more models and sizes, that come with sheets/lines, and some folks are happy with them. I have not tried the newer models, but for simple downwind travel I have an aversion to sail lines/sheets.
The Pacific Action Sail. For sailing functionality it was the best of the downwind rigs. The downside is that it uses (thick) bungees to spring it erect, and sheets/lines for control. And it needs permanent outfitting installed on the boat; some way to attach the bungee (pad eyes and clips), some way to attach webbing straps that hold the sail base in place (grommet straps), fairleads to run the control lines through, and if you want hand-free so you can use a paddle with the sail is up, two open clam cleats to lock down the lines with the sail at the desired angle.
With outfitting installed on a boat the PA sail is by far the best of the downwind rigs, but is a bit of a PITA to put on (before launching, impossible to do while on the water), and once on it kinda needs to stay there, even while collapsed and furled atop the thwarts or deck.
Spirit Sails. Still my favorite simple downwind sail. Hand free. Rotatable at 0, 30 and 60 degrees in either direction. Stores in a slender bag when not in use. Requires the use of a base mount and Y connector piece.
P2160525 by Mike McCrea, on FlickrThe Spirit Sail poles simply plug into that rotatable Y.
P2160528 by Mike McCrea, on FlickrCompact, simple, easy. And no longer available.
TopKayaker has some well done articles on downwind and other sails. This one is SOT-use based, but worth a read. Although, concerning the Spirit Sail, note that the author writes: Not having had a chance to try the Spirit Sail, it's hard for me to say.
Kinda hard to review something you have never used eh?
http://www.sit-on-topkayaking.com/Articles/SurfSail/KayakSailing2.html
One last caveat on sails. At least with some types of sails, on some boats, in some areas (hows that for qualifiers) the sail is required to have a transparent window.
I started out with a full sailing rig, leeboard, tried to make a rudder which has so far been a dismal failure. We used our poles for masts with bamboo for the boom. That whole setup worked great on my canoes but did switch over to the Spirit Sail for my decked boats, just easier. Love it when the wind is in my favor but that seems to be far and few between times. A pic sailing down the St. John towards Ft. Kent. We did 17 miles in something crazy like under an hour.
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We used the large Windpaddle on a 26 day trip on the Kazan in 2015. The Kazan runs N-NE and prevailing winds are out of the NW. We could tack reasonably well, but only had a few times with the wind truly at our backs. Haven't taken it the past 2 trips because they were on the Thoa and Bloodvein and direction of travel was primarily westbound.
I'd take the Windpaddle again under these conditions: trip has large bodies of water, not extensive portaging, covers a lot of distance and direction of travel is somewhat with prevailing winds. As easy examples the Missouri in MT and the Thelon in Nunavut both would meet these conditions.
We really enjoyed the windpaddles. Super easy to use. Sailing for a couple hours even at the same speed as paddling is a fun change.
I'd take the Windpaddle again under these conditions: trip has large bodies of water, not extensive portaging, covers a lot of distance and direction of travel is somewhat with prevailing winds. As easy examples the Missouri in MT and the Thelon in Nunavut both would meet these conditions.
We really enjoyed the windpaddles. Super easy to use. Sailing for a couple hours even at the same speed as paddling is a fun change.
I just got back from a trip (Wollaston Lake to Hudson Bay) where we used the solo size Wind Paddle extensively with heavily loaded tandem canoes. In the right winds, they are great--we got a 20 mile ride on one lake. In higher winds, they can be a handful for both bow and stern--we had winds and waves (following seas) where we were sailing where I was concerned about breaking my carbon paddle while ruddering (should have use my big straight blade). I wouldn't use them for solo--way too much going on unless you had very consistent and light winds. With good winds we could manage 6mph with fully loaded and slow PakBoats. Light winds were about the same as paddling--or you could paddle and use sail both and cover some miles assisted.
I rarely ever trip without one, i.e. the smaller diameter model, and often bring it along on day-paddles, too. It is standard equipment for me. It weighs a few ounces and stows and deploys easily. I love taking advantage of tailwinds. I've used it on virtually every boat I've paddled the last 8 years: folding kayaks, solo and tandem canoes, even on an inflatable SUP. Simple, brilliant design, but not inexpensive. A friend of mine tried some cheap knock-offs which unravelled and tore almost immediately. Get the real thing. Mine has held up well after years of use in some pretty gusty winds. For bigger tandems and my big Klepper A2 I think the larger Windpaddle would be even more fun, though I've yet to try one. Most of my use of it is in solo-ing because that's how I usually paddle. BTW, Mason, Wallaston Lake to Hudson Bay sounds like an amazing trip. I'm jealous.
When Kathleen and I were preparing for our Thelon River trip in 1993, we practiced sailing, when we still lived in North Vancouver, with our inside-the-tent tarp. We also took along a telescoping rod, tied to the thwart, to hoist the sail. It worked great when we practiced. I steered from the stern, while Kathleen held the tarp open to the wind. On the Thelon, however, there was only one day where we had a tailwind, which was so slight, that we made faster progress with both of us paddling. All other days, we had headwinds, or the occasional no wind. This was when I came to appreciate a comment I once read that, "On a wilderness canoe trip on the Barren Grounds, you don't need a map or a compass. All you need to do is head directly into the wind, and eventually you get to where you want to go."
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Mason,
Wollaston Lake to Churchill sounds like a great trip. I too am envious!
Wollaston Lake to Churchill sounds like a great trip. I too am envious!
Didn't paddle to Churchill--paddled the Tha Anne to the Bay, then got picked up by motorboat then to Arviat.
