Sails for sailing canoes

This is a company you should check if you seeks sails for sailing canoes with competitive prices: Żaglownia Vector Sails (www.vectorsails.com). Company is located in Poland but they do deliver outside of Poland also. You should contact them in autumn - winter time if you wish to sail [with new sails] next summer.

Links

I spent quite some time with 'googling' something new - with very little success. Many sites I visited I have already checked. Anyhow, www.smallsailboats.co.uk .. has relatively good set of links to canoe sailing or related web sites. Worth to check though some links are not valid anymore.

Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes

I have to admit - I am not big fan of outriggers but I was very impressed after reading this book. This book gives very good overview of outriggers and instructions should be detailed enough to build your own sailing canoe. Writer's attitude is great: build traditional sailing canoes (not only because they are traditonal) but with new building methods. I have to store this book for some 25 years. Then I am retired and live somewhere in northern Brazil. I believe that's a good place to build and sail the outrigger sailing sailing canoe.
You should find the book from www.amazon.com (ISBN-10:0071487913).

Centerboard

I tried to find [again] instructions to build a simple pivoting centerboard... Some reason I was not too keen about the previous post - maybe it just looked too experimental and not strong enough. BUT, this one here actually looks pretty good, simple and strong enough. Is suppose the basic design principles are widely used but I had problems to find simple drawings like this one. Full instructions here

Lang Warren's pivoting daggerboard

My both sailing canoes have leeboards. Older (ACA) has only one and it works well. Second (5M/C) has two leeboards and I have had problems to get them work because of glassfibre structure - I did not get (yet) good friction to keep leeboard down in the water (I will put rubber between leeboard and hull). Now I am planning the third sailing canoe and I would like to build it with centreboard.

I got picture of the pivoting dagger board - which looks like interesting option for sailing canoes. Never seen this type of construction before - I would like to know if it really works (if it is paractical) or is it just a nice design idea ..

Aquamuse

Aquamuse (www.aquamuse.jp) is probably the best commercially available canoe sailing concept at the moment for those who want off the self product. Unfortunately availability is limited to Japan only (assumption made based on Japanese web site). It looks very well made (quality of work & design), safe, and it looks really cool. Sails area seems to be a little bit small (less than 4 m2) and hull shape does not look very good for paddling but who cares about paddling capability. Video clips are worth to check out. (Copyright of image: Aquamuse)

"The Shape of the Canoe"

I found great article about designing open canoes - "The Shape of the Canoe" written by John Winters (article at boatbuilding.com/article.php/ShapeoftheCanoe. I suppose most of, if not all, hull design principles presented by John applies to sailing canoes also...? Canoes designed by John (www.greenval.com) looks really cool. I did quick search and found quite many beautifully designed and modern kayak and canoe plans - but all plans and DIY kits of sailing canoes seems to look like 20-30 years old design. Hope to see some development in this area also.

First of all

Why I started canoe sailing? .. First of all I did not have previous experience from sailing and I did not want to invest lots of money for sailing boat. I had paddling experience and all gear needed for paddling so open canoe with sail sounded like a good option. I think sailing canoes are very versatile. Modern dinghies are mare for day sailing (or actually for racing) but there is no good space for tent, sleeping bag, food, etc - decked sailign canoe provides plenty of space. Sailing canoes are simple and low cost. Transportation is relatively easy even for one person. etc.