Sam says that his drawings are self-explanatory
and that "There's no point in putting dimensions on my
drawings... The whole thing is pretty flexible." Since
they necessarily vary on your canoe, his canoe and
someone else's canoe. I agree. As soon as spring
comes, I'm off to the bamboo patch to find tripod mast
pieces.
note: click on any transparent image for a
larger GIF where it's easier to see the details.
His rig included tholepins for rowing with 7-foot
oars, but that doesn't change the utility of the
simple tripod-and-lashing sail rig. As you will see he
wound up steering with the leeboard-- shades of
Yakaboo -- whenever he wanted to go to
windward. I have quoted from the article to help
illustrate what Sam was about when he designed
this:
 "What
is proposed is a simple system of sticks, string, and
available fabric which will put you afloat anywhere in
a paddling/rowing/sailing craft you've learned to
handle well.
"...all parts would have to be made [on
site], clamped, or lashed to a borrowed canoe at a
distant place, [so] these things had to be
solved: a mast and the means to support it; a system
for steering; and a simply-constructed sail.
"I looked about for a craft of good hull form that
we could own, rent, borrow, (or replace) just about
anywhere. It took some soul girding to put the
proceeds from the sale of a perfectly good wooden
sailing dory into an 18' Grumman aluminum canoe. But
this is where we were at... Normally it lived right on
top of the station wagon."
•
"I suppose that I might have done myself a favor by
going out and buying the proper Grumman accessories...
A friend let me try his canoe with all the Grumman
stuff screwed onto it. It rowed well, sailed
tolerably, but all of it rattled and had the feeling
of aluminum pipes and plates mechanically attached to
an otherwise clean hull."
•
"What I wanted for this boat was a permanent rowing
frame that did not jut out, and an effective sailing
rig so simple that it could be set or stowed without
filling the boat with gear... Our objective was not to
convert this hull, but to devise a small bag full of
tricks that might be applied to any canoe made
available to us in a distant place."
Frame from above.
"Some system had to be devised whereby the
center strut could be eliminated... In view of
renting or borrowing a tin canoe at some future
date, I allowed myself the luxury of unscrewing the
strut temporarily, but whatever structure replaced
it would have to be clamped or lashed to the
boat... [A] shelf timber was run under the
gunwale flange on the inside, a wale thick enough
for the tholepins was put on the outside, and
[both held] by a cleat across the gunwale
amidships and by cleats across the boat directly
over the remaining quarter struts. Carriage bolts
and wing nuts could be used [to assemble]
this rectangular frame [which] becomes like
a crate which clamps rigidly into the midship
section of the canoe."
•
Frame, assembled.
"The tin canoe (as well as our wooden one,
to which the same gear has been applied without
alteration) seems to be at its best as a sailing
craft when the breeze is a steady 10 to 20 knots.
Both canoes, with two people aboard, have been
sailed with the full rig in winds estimated to be
35 knots in puffs. Wind and bay chop do not seem to
be a problem as long as the wind is steady and the
canoe is beating into it. The charm departs
[with] beam seas or skiddy downwind
steering ... as the canoe heads off. It's better to
drop sail and row when caught out in such stuff."
•
Leeboard broomstick.
The leeboard. -- "...simply an
upright plank squeezed between two parallel logs
that are looped to the gunwales with lashings. The
board is pivoted fore and aft on a lashing let
through a hole in the center [and] propped
stiffly upright by a broomstick cut to fit the
exact distance between the upper tip of the "lever"
[or handle of the leeboard] and the
opposite gunwale of the boat. Tied to the gunwale
at one end, and through a hole in the top of the
"lever" at the other, the broomstick prevents the
leeboard from being forced against the hull on one
tack or pulled away from it on the other. [The
board] stays put on both tacks and can be
forgotten unless you are steering the boat with it.
Compression between the parallel logs keeps the
plank from twisting or splitting."
•
Four lashings and three sticks
hold the leeboard in place.
"The parallel logs can be broomsticks or
furring strips. They too are thonged together
through holes at their tips and are lashed (with
these thongs) tightly to the gunwale at their ends.
Spacer blocks or additional turns of the forward
seizing between the gunwale and the logs may be
necessary to bring the logs (and the board)
parallel to the centerline of the boat. Precise
alignment of board and boat appears to be
uncritical."
•
Steering. -- "Steering with a paddle is
easy and fun... The paddle is held over the leeward
quarter where it is snugged against the boat by the
sideslipping action.
"Downwind in heavy air... the canoe yawed badly,
it rolled, and the helmsman needed two hands for
the steering paddle with nothing to spare to hold
the sheet. The yawing proved controllable by moving
aft and settling the stern, which in turn canceled
some of the roll.
"On a very windy day just a few weeks ago, the
canoe demonstrated rather plainly how she wished to
be steered under sail. Working her to windward
through a crowded anchorage with a paddle overside
on her lee quarter, I found her performance to be
erratic. At times she spurted ahead while laying
very close to the wind. At other times, conditions
being equal, she poked along while sagging off and
acting as though she had a tin can nailed to her
tin bottom. As I paddled her about at the end of a
tack, the leeboard, released of sideslip pressure,
rotated forward in the slackened lashings of the
gunwale logs. A hard puff hit her just then, and
without moving through the water much at all she
rounded smartly up and went back on the old tack.
As the wind streaked by she kept rounding up, back
and forth, until I got the board back to its normal
position. Then off she went, without a helmsman,
footing swiftly and without deviation on the
closest windward heading I'd seen her take. If I
rotated the foot of the board while she was
sailing, she rounded up. If I raked it aft, she
fell off.
"With the wind abaft the beam and the leeboard
trailing, some control can be had by moving crew
weight aft and by leaning the boat one way or the
the other to deflect her head with the bow wave.
The paddle, however, must be used downwind."
•
Mast basics.
Spars. -- "The most workable mast
[is] a short, light tripod made of spruce
rippings approximately the size of broom handles...
strung together at the upper end and thonged to
three spots in the boat at the lower end...
[while the] headstay rope pulls the various
legs into tension or compression and tightens the
whole thing into an extremely solid unit. As long
as the legs are given some spread it doesn't make
much difference whether it's set symmetrically in
the boat or not.
"Furring strip standing alone or nailed together
makes fine spars for the first go-around. It's the
cheapest wood in the lumberyard."
•
Mast lashing.
Sails. -- "I've made many sails from
6-mil polyethylene. Given tape reinforcement for
stability, and draft provided by the roaches,
they've usually lasted me several seasons of hard
use and they've set as well as could be expected
when cut by an amateur. It took Susan and me about
two hours to lay out, reinforce, cut, and grommet
the polyethylene spritsail for the canoe... The
secret of adhesion seems to be to clean the
slightly waxy surface with alcohol or some other
solvent where the tape is to be applied. The
grommets, punched through successive layers of tape
reinforcement rivet the corners into unity. Our
polyethylene sails have held up well to every kind
of summer wind without stretch of the leech or
migration of the grommets."
•
Etc. -- "This is the vessel of our little
fleet that we can count on to be with as at a given
time and place and to carry us the distance
planned. For a fully functional 18-footer, there's
been very little money involved."
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