All this Kayaksailor talk... finally got myself out

[DLee]

Had the afternoon off, light gusts, beautiful day. Took an hour plus to find all the parts... but finally got out for a little while. Man have I missed being out on the water.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6kx11ycbNw

By the way, Hi Guys!

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[DLee]

[gbellware]

Dennis,
Great to see you back. With your lack of posting and time on the water I am going to suggest a serious review of your priorities. Heck, you can't even get a good swim in with the lack of effort you are showing. Get back in/out there!



g

[DLee]

Aye Aye Captain!



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[bjorn240]

That looks great Dennis. Lake Kitchawan? Looks quite exotic with all that plant life!

[martin2007]

Looks fantastic, Dennis! I'm on the water a lot, but my only sailing I do in my canoes and kayaks are with the decidedly undemanding "Windpaddle". Better than nothing, but really an idiot's version of "sailing". I'm envious of your rig, and even more of your success with it. Thanks for sharing.

[DLee]

Yeah, Lake Kitchawan Bjorn. It's a quaint little lake as it’s down the street, pretty easy to get to. Have you made your Block Island run yet? I'm hoping to get out on the Sound pretty soon. Just can't decide whether to take the single or the double. I'd like to work up to doing a round trip crossing with the sails. Probably take the AEII, not sure which sail though. BSD would be easier but I do love the aesthetic of the Klepper rig.

Thanks Martin. This is a super simple rig the way I have it. Certainly worth looking into. Upwind sailing is really fun.

Went out with the BSD sail a couple days ago and completely had my hands full from the moment I left the beach. Had the sail reefed all the way down and it was soooo tippy it took me a fair bit of time before I was comfortable enough to bring my second leg into the boat. The height of the mast and weight of the sail swinging around had every muscle in my body wound far too tight. The wind was gusting pretty strong and it was pretty timid going at first.

Instead of mounting the big board from Mark at Long Haul I decided to use the small control board seen above. This actually worked great. What didn't work great was trying to use a Klepper leeboard in place of the ugly 3/4 inch ply board I cut a while back (seen in the video). I just looped a line through the bolt hole in the Klepper board and hung it the same way I hung the ply board. But the Klepper board was too light and didn't want to hang down into the water. Once underway though, pressure would hold it against the gunnel. But it was tricky to keep it in good position, it wanted to ride up the side. This was an interesting development as I thought the individual Klepper board would work great… but it didn’t.

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