Sailing canoe

JimHawkins · #1 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007

I have a canoe. Someone gave me a windsurfer sail. These go together like peanut butter and chocolate, right?

The sail is 6.6 square meter, air-foil shaped, with a 16 foot mast. I jury rigged it onto the boat and it moved along quite well under a light breeze, but it had quite a bit of weather helm. I had the sail located just behind the front seat, and the lee board located amidship.

I am putting in some permanent mounting for the sail and lee board. Does it matter where the sail is located, or is it just the relationship between the sail and the leeboard that matters? In other words, is it just a question of the relationship between center-of-effort and center-of-lateral-resistance, or is the equation more complicated?

Sapperwhite · #2 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007

Check this out:

http://www.enter.net/~skimmer/building/aca_rig.pdf

and this:

http://www.paddlin.com/fivelakes/canoe_sailing.html

Sapperwhite · #3 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007

here is some good looking lee board info.
http://www.enter.net/~skimmer/building/building.html

JimHawkins · #4 (**permalink**) 08-10-2007

Lots of good construction info in those links. Thanks. I'll keep you posted as I try things out.

Here's a link to an interesting sailing canoe voyage.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~tim/pix/cuba.html