Photos, drawings, and descriptions of outrigger canoes around the world. http://gary.dierking.net
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Sunday, December 17, 2017
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Ulua For Sale In NZ
Michael Coonrod has an Ulua for sale at Lake Wanaka in the South Island of New Zealand.
The hull is made of Kahikatea and Red Cedar. The
decks have Totara and Kahikatea. It's set up with a stub mast rig for
windsurfer sails. The boom was made for windsurfer sails, and any
windsurfer sail can be adapted to fit this rig. This is the high wind
sail, but it has two others that could go with the boat if wanted as well.
It can also be sold with a 2HP mercury.
Contact Michael at: wanakawoodenboats@gmail.com
Monday, October 23, 2017
Monday, September 25, 2017
Advanced Lashing Techniques
While my small outriggers don't require this degree of effort in lashing them together, it is still of great interest to see how larger vessels accomplish this task. Lashings reduce the stress concentrations that would result from simply bolting things together. The first time I took my Ulua surfing and watched it cartwheel though the surf after it threw me out, I have been sold on lashings. If it had been bolted together I would have been gathering up pieces, but instead it was completely intact.
Monday, September 18, 2017
Philippine Bangka Outrigger and Boom Variations
From Bob Holtzman's excellent Indigenous Boats blog.
Friday, September 8, 2017
What We Should Be Doing
For most of the last ten years we have taken a short flight up to Fiji where I have my Tamanu stored under a friends house. A few hours to clean it up and put it back together and we're off for a couple weeks of exploring and trolling for those delicious Spanish Mackerel. This year Rose has had surgery on her shoulder and won't be doing anything too active for a few more months. So we'll be staying at home until next season when I'll be trialing a new lug sail made out of an old sail.
Monday, September 4, 2017
Double Lug Rigged Shunting Wa'apa
I recently received the following letter from John Lazenby of Washington state:
I thought I'd share what my Wa'apa looks like these days.
I've
put a shunting dipping lug schooner rig on it. The sails are pretty
well balanced, I think each COE is about 12-18 inches aft of the mast.
Each sail has a continuous tack line that goes through two blocks, one
ahead and one aft of the mast. Hauling the tack to the new tack point is
generally enough to get the yard to dip over to the new side. The sails
set beautifully and symmetrically on each tack. The total sail area is
160 square feet. On a recent outing (with mutli-day camping gear aboard)
I was able point higher and sail faster than a Welsford Navigator, so
the rig does fine working upwind. I couldn't really tell you how close I
can sail to the wind, since I generally sail in pretty significant
currents. It does seem to point better when the currents are
favorable... I haven't come up with a great way of keeping the sails
from blocking each other on a run, so it isn't the fastest boat going
straight downwind although it does fine. I'm working on extra tack
points to move the fore sail more toward the ama. The sails have two
reef lines at 25 and 50%. Since I generally do multi-day cruises, I love
knowing I can reef and do it early and often.
It
started out life with the oceanic lateen shunting rig. A beautiful, fun
rig to sail. I decided to try another rig in a powerful afternoon wind
on a mountain lake. While shunting in high winds, the sail with both 20
foot spars would kite high into the air, occasionally swooping in to
snap off an unsuspecting cleat or body part. At that moment a pair of
smaller, reefable sails sounded more manageable.
The
photo shows the boat in full cruising mode. You can just see the
inflatable kayak/safety ama on the leeward side. That is a fantastic
combination. Anchoring is often more practical than pulling ashore here
(Puget Sound) with tide swings that seem to generally be in the 15-20
foot range. So having the kayak as a tender is very convenient.
The
main hull is fully decked. Each of the three sections is divided in two
with a watertight rigid foam bulkhead. Each compartment has a somewhat
watertight hatch. The center section hatches are stored inside their
compartments most of the time, but get put in place in force 4 or 5 when
the reefs go in.
I have a 30 inch wide
trampoline and a park bench for comfort. I sleep on the trampoline and
set up a lean-to tarp between the bench back and the masts.. The park
bench makes for comfortable sailing in high winds or when I'm not
worried about performance. The bench also provides a solid surface for
setting up a stove.
I have an asymmetrical
triangular cross section ama. The ama has about 1 person worth of
buoyancy. It is a single piece, 16 feet long and has two removable
hatches to air it out during storage. The leeward side is vertical. I
have a foil whose top slides along a rod above the ama. The lift gets
transferred to the straight, flat side of the ama. The foil needs to be a
couple of feet behind center when working upwind, and can go all the
way aft for downwind. The lines that pull it along the rod also release a
brake that clamps onto the rod. When the sails are aback, the foil is
free to pivot up, so the boat has relatively little lateral resistance
aback, which makes me feel like there is less stress on the parts of the
boat that weren't really designed for those forces. I have stays on the
masts going out to the amas that have been converted to 1/8" dyneema
since this photo was taken. They make me feel better about the forces on
the masts while working upwind.
Shunting is
pretty quick, but also pretty busy when singlehanding (almost always
singlehanding). Release the (continuous) sheets (aft first to get the
old bow to start falling off). Release the (continuous) tack lines.
Tighten the new forward tack line. Shift the foil aft. TIghten the new
aft tack line. Sheet the aft sail in part way (not all the way, it will
stall). Sheet in the forward sail. Generally sheet in the two sails
together, keeping the aft sail a little tighter, since you are also
trying to swing the bow to windward. With camping gear, and a few days
food and water aboard I can shunt about as fast as I can decelerate the
boat and accelerate it on the new tack.
I
transport the ama and masts on my car top. The rest of the boat gets
stacked on an 8 foot utility trailer. I can set up or take down the boat
in about 45 minutes for day sailing. It takes 1.5 hours if I need to
inflate and attach the kayak and load up all my cruising gear. It often
takes longer when I'm talking to people who are interested in the boat.
My record is about 2.5 hours when I assembled it at the Port Townsend
Pocket Yachters Palooza while talking to many interesting people.
The boat (just the two hulls, actually) is about 5 years old now. Still no name; I'm open to suggestions...
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Storer's FAQ
Michael Storer has published an excellent FAQ covering many aspects of small boat construction and tuning. Study it here!
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Tangaroa Class Still Going Strong
I crewed in a race on one of these in Rarotonga about ten years ago
and I'm glad to see that they're still active. Read the race results here.
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Outrigger Sailing Adventure Okinawa
Tom Burkard built his stretched Ulua five years ago and has given it hundreds of hours of sea time.
Monday, July 24, 2017
How Tough Are Strip Composite Canoes?
This may be painful to watch but destruction testing is the ultimate answer to the question of how tough some fragile strips of cedar and fiberglass can be. He did it so now you don't have to.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Wa'apa in Brazil
Daniel Eggert Barros from Itapema, a city in the state of Santa Catarina, southern Brazil built his Wa'apa from material contained in my book: Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes.
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Le Ta Va'a
John Misky and friends in New Zealand are building a Samoan style sailing canoe. He sawed, planed and sanded a big block of foam to the shape he wanted and then took the sectional shapes off of it to make ply molds for strip planking. Follow progress at his Facebook page.
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Monday, May 29, 2017
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Friday, May 12, 2017
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Island of Socotra
Denis Romanov built his junk rigged double outrigger on the island of Socotra, 380 km off the coast of Yemen. Few suitable materials were available there but he created a practical and capable sailing canoe.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Monday, April 24, 2017
Monday, April 17, 2017
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Proa ITI for Sale
New Zealand proa sailors may be interested in ITI, a prototype 23 ft shunter that has lived in the Whangarei harbor for the
last decade and a bit more.
Outrigger sailing waka ITI (or Micronesian type flying proa) was originally
built to be used as a fishing waka, and go trolling under sail on the Tutukaka
coast, were he was built. But changing circumstances and the owners relocation
brought about a change in those plans……moving from the coast to the upper
reaches of the Whangarei harbor made getting out to sea much more difficult. So
in order to spend the odd night aboard, a whare (deck house) was built to
provide shelter and a lock-up place for gear.
Now,
with older age and bad health starting to show in wear and tare of
joints, I need a waka with a deck that I can stagger about on, if
not a small monohull that does not require much moving about on deck.
ITI has a narrow and slightly sunken deck, which was intended to
prevent the imagined fish caught along the Tutukaka coast from falling
overboard, but which does restrict movement from end to end when shunting.
There is the possibility in lifting the tack traveler to a height that will
provide support from falling overboard and thus remedy this restriction, and at
the same time it would be worthwhile to change the rig so that the mast does
not need to be raked while shunting, which is what is needed now. ITI, has a running stays system that allows
the crabclaw sail to be carried over the sheets when shunting single handed and
a fixed mast would eliminate this complication, as well as allowing a bigger sail to be carried, but this
would be a dipping lugsail rather than the Oceanic Lateen and would have some
cost in outlay and labour, which in my case would be better spent on the 30ft
Pahi proa that I am busy building. ITI is in need of some maintenance and would
be better off in frequent use with an owner who has the time for this, as well
as doing harbour and coastal sailing around Whangarei and the Northland east
coast.
Any enthusiast willing to take him over at price near $2000 NZ may contact me via email at southernoutriggers@xtra.co.nz.
Selling price mentioned above includes a 2hp Yamaha OB motor, although
a set of female mould infibreglass, for the waka and the ama, are on offer as
well, but at an adjustment to the abovementioned price.Sunday, March 19, 2017
Build a Paraw
I was very pleased to see construction plans available for a 20' (6M) Philippine paraw. Visit Lorenzo Acompanado II's website to view or order his plans.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Canoe Racks
In Tahiti and the surrounding islands, the tidal range is very small, only about a foot and always at noon and midnight. This makes it very convenient to store your outrigger on a platform just above the high tide level.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
500 Sails
500 Sails is an organization devoted to restoring the maritime traditions of the Marianas Islands. The above photo shows the prototype 26' proa being built in Derek Kelsall's shop here in New Zealand. Upon completion it and more building materials will be shipped to Saipan where many more will be built. The KSS building method produces light weight foam/fiberglass composite hulls without a female mold.
There is a Facebook page to follow their progress.
I built my own 45' version of this ancient design in Saipan back in 1983. I used C-flex to construct the fiberglass hull. It was designed to take six paddlers to train for OC6 competitions. The hull was unfortunately destroyed by a falling ironwood tree during a typhoon some years later.
There is a Facebook page to follow their progress.
I built my own 45' version of this ancient design in Saipan back in 1983. I used C-flex to construct the fiberglass hull. It was designed to take six paddlers to train for OC6 competitions. The hull was unfortunately destroyed by a falling ironwood tree during a typhoon some years later.
Friday, January 27, 2017
PJOA
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Moana
If I could sail an outrigger like this girl, I'd be a happy man. The modeling of the canoes is very good and the water is a great advancement from previous films.
While the canoe bodies and platforms are modeled on Fijian canoes, the sailing rig of the smaller canoe was the tacking type instead of the shunting rigs used by Fijians. I guess we can call it "Oceanic Fusion".
Thursday, January 12, 2017
HarryProa
I spotted this Harry Proa moored at Taipa on a recent camping trip to Northland, New Zealand.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)