Canoe Sailing Adventures: Last & First Sail of the year

The last chance OCSG Coniston meet held on October 2015 is always one of my favourites.

It a great lake to sail, the weather is often exciting, the autumn scenery is something to behold and the two café options are always enticing. I had an extra incentive for this year’s meet, as I would be picking up my new sailing canoe. An experimental version of Solway-Dory’s Shearwater Evolution!

It also meant saying good bye to my Solway Dory Curlew which has been an excellent sail and very adaptable to improve its seaworthiness and general tinkering. Over the years I owned it I increasingly looked to making it more seaworthy as my trips became more ambitious. I purchased Solway dory's outriggers, obtained the now sadly unobtainable Harmony front and rear airbags, replaced the Holt side-bags with tougher and bigger inflatable boat rollers and experimented with detachable front decks. All these improvements were leading me to the inevitable which was the purchase of a decked canoe with better seaworthiness .I also was keen to have better capacity to take passengers/ crew on board and the Shearwater fitted these requirements brilliantly.

I drove through the night to arrive early at Coniston on Friday morning to drop off the Curlew to its new owner and then headed down to Solway Dory to pick up my New Shearwater from their workshop hidden deep in the Cumbrian countryside.

Upon arrival my new canoe was trolleyed effortlessly towards me on its side: One of the reasons for not obtaining a larger, decked canoe before now was the restricted access I have at the side of my house to reach the garden. SD solution to this problem was to construct a “Side Trolley” which as they demonstrated, holds the canoe perfectly balanced on its side and makes it effortless to handle through narrow spaces.

The "Side Trolley" in action, enabling my shearwater to fit trough a 24" gap down the side of my house.

The canoe also features a watertight access panel to the front of the cockpit. This makes the entire front under deck watertight, with the rear deck still open to the cockpit for quick storage of items such as launching trolleys etc. After a little bit of work on my mast to ensure it would fit in the new canoe and working out the best way to load the canoe on my car I returned to Coniston eager to get on the water for the first time.

On the water for the first time.

The canoe is only two foot longer then my Curlew but it feels quite different on the water. The main difference in my view is that it’s much more directionally stable, it will track much better and needs less of the constant corrections the Curlew required to keep on course. This means the canoe is a little slower through the tacks however but I don’t see this as a disadvantage. After an hour or so on the water I returned to the shore in order to sort out my sleeping arrangements before the light failed.

The Saturday was one of fairly breezy winds and strong gusts. As usual a large contingent of OCSG members had assembled. Once on the water a number of us headed down the lake towards Peel island. The perfect first destination for the new shearwater.

On board the Shearwater: wave deflector built into the arma’s crossbeam underneath is the cockpit hatch for watertight front under-deck stowage.

The secret harbour

On the Sunday the bulk of the members headed down lake again for the Peel Island. The wind was much less gusty then the day before. I removed the outriggers and sailed in front of the campsite for a while. The side decks make this canoe much more seaworthy then my Curlew. I could sail the Shearwater almost on its beam-ends without any water coming into the cockpit. I decided to head off up to the Bluewater café for an early lunch before I packed up and headed back to London.

Without outriggers

My Curlew, with its front, rear and side airbags meant there were plenty of places to store items such as paddles, pumps and bags, by sliding them underneath bags and clipping the onto thwarts. The Shearwater with its hard surfaces needs a different, more organised approach to attaching and storing such paraphernalia. It has a surprising number of air-tanks and storage compartments: Forward and aft are two end tanks that are accessible by 9" screw-in hatches. Behind the front compartment is a cavernous watertight compartment accessible by a large hatch in the front of the cockpit. On each side of the cockpit are the side buoyancy tanks.The starboard tank is divided into two; the front element is flood-able by removal of a bung, this can be removed during a capsize to provide water ballast when reentering the canoe to prevent the canoe rolling over on top of you during reentry.

For now my new canoe is stored on its side, under covers impatiently waiting for Spring and another season of sailing…

Roll (sideways) on!

Shakedown Sail 2016

The uncertain weather this spring has meant plans to sail my Shearwater have been frustrated more then once. I always try (but often fail) to make the first sail of the season a gentle one to shakedown any issues and with a new canoe that was more important to me then previous years. Attempts to launch on the Medway were frustrated more then once.Which lead me to Leybourne lake in Snodland Kent. I was able to launch into the relatively small gravel pit and try out the canoe in sheltered waters. The problem with such small bodies of water are the flukey winds,but its not a bad spot to shakedown , practise capsize recovery and introduce non sailors to the canoe in sheltered waters.

I returned there a second time with my wife, to get her to feel comfortable onboard the new canoe, which now had a specific crew seat unlike the Curlew. I took great care in setting up the canoe, rolling it down the slipway on its trolley into the water and carefully helping my wife onboard.Once she was comfortably onboard we set of to sail the small lake, but immediately something was wrong.

The canoe was very sluggish going down wind and would not tack at all without paddle assistance. It was impossible to beat upwind and gusts of wind would lean the canoe over without generating any forward motion. The wife started to get upset and demanded to be put ashore, except I couldn't get the canoe to go where I wanted it.

What was the problem? Was there some design flaw in my new canoe? It sailed fine previously with just myself onboard. Did I not have our weight distribution correct, had I forgotten how to sail? What was wrong

It took me almost a full half hour to realise that I still had the launch trolley firmly attached to the underside of the hull!