Making your own sail.
When I put on a blogg about my first attempt at canoe sailing I didn't put on any pics of the fittings, so here they are.I decided on the DIY route by buying a secondhand dinghy sail and adapting it to my needs. A good publication to read if your thinking of fitting a sail is 'Canoes Under Sail' by John Bull available from Solway Dory. In this book he mentions that Optimist dinghy sails transfer quite well to canoes, so on that basis I got hold of one.
I wanted to use my two piece canoe pole in the rig purely for convenience and ease of setup which means the sail is not that big at just over 27 sq feet but big enough for me at this stage. I use the longer half of my canoe pole as the mast and I cut the sail to fit the mast height. The other half of the canoe pole acts as the sprit. I cut off the top of the sail in order to try and keep as much sail area as possible (given the height restriction of the mast) and also in the hope that this part of the sail might keep a reasonable shape and so far it looks like it does.
This is the sail in good condition before I took a pair of scissors to it,
with the red lines indicating the
cuts. The yellow circled area shows the usual position of the sail loop that
attaches to the sprit end. I cut this loop off and re-attached it to the new
peak (just above the number 6) to create a new point for the sprit to
attach.
The finished sail.
The top of the sail attaches to the mast with a sleeve made from webbing material.
I bought the proper sprit end, (little black spikey thing on end of doweling) cut it down and attached it to the doweling which then sits in the pole. Electrical tape was wound round the doweling a few times to make it a snug fit.
When re-attaching the sprit end loop to the sail I sewed in a few extra layers of sailcloth to re-enforce the area as I imagine there will be a lot of stress here. Although not half as much stress as there was when I was doing the sewing.
The wooden 'mast bracket' is similar to the type MK and Amelia have fitted, although the bottom of my mast sits in a harness made out of webbing material and the wooden bracket is attached to the mast thwart with a 9mm dia steel bolt passing through the whole lot.
There is no thread on the bolt so when you pull the wooden handle the bolt slips out and the bracket slides off the thwart with everything attached. I thought this arrangement might be handy in the event of a capsize and I had difficulty righting the boat. I could slide the mast bracket off the thwart (with the mast still attached) and with the bracket tethered to the thwart it could all be recovered after re-entering the boat. This has still to be tested on the water!
The other end of the sprit is attached to the mast with a sleeve made from, you guessed it, webbing material.
The leeboard is a fairly standard set up with about 32 inches of board below the waterline and the leeboard thwart is adjustable so it can be moved to different positions on the gunwales if necessary. I've positioned the leeboard in the centre of the boat which just happens to be slightly behind where I think the C of E of the sail is and it seems to work fine here. The first couple of times I sailed, I didn't have the leeboard made up and experienced a lot of sideslip and found it very awkward trying to use the paddle as a leeboard and steer as well. Last weekend I tried the leeboard for the first time and what a fantastic difference it makes I can actually get to where I want to go with ease. I wouldn't sail without it now.
I don't know whether to call this arrangement a thwart a bracket or what but it holds the paddle in position reasonably well for steering and allows me to concentrate on sailing the boat or in the calmer moments lets me sit back and enjoy the ride without having to think about where I should be positioning the paddle.
The arrangement is held in with shockcord which clips onto a D ring in the bottom of the boat.
The only problem I've had with it is on a couple of occasions when I've tried to make a tight turn and have to make a rowing action with the paddle, the toggle popped out from under the metal bar. I'll have to make this more secure as I like this arrangement. As you may have noticed, some of the fittings are made out of cheap white pine (if there is such a thing as cheap wood these days). I wanted to make sure that these were going to work and will re-do them in ash with any alterations that are necessary.
I've had a huge amount of fun working on this and would say to anyone interested in fitting a sail to their boat...give it a go, be it a commercially made rig or DIY. Sailing your canoe is enormous fun.
Happy paddling and sailing,
This article was originally posted on our Forum HERE.