Published by the Open Canoe Sailing Group

News From Abroad (JohnB)

USA
From the ACA we hear that Jim Bowman continues in his winning ways. He was first in the 5M class at the National Championship and another first at the Divisional Championship in NY State as well as coming fourth in the ACA class. Bob Celifarco, another old friend from '96 is also showing well, managing fourth in the 5M Nationals and 5th at the Divisional races and bless me, but Larry Zuk won the Cruising class at the Nationals. The IC World Championship this year was won by Steve Clark of the US at Rhode Island. Marilyn Vogel was again elected Secretary to the ACA National Sailing Committee with Bob Celifarco as Chairman and Chuck Sutherland Treasurer. Larry Zuk remains as Keeper of Records and Historian. The ACA seems to be doing well, at any rate they have a paid up subscription of 96.

Finland
In Finland they have held their first sailing canoe regatta for sixty years, sailing mostly ACA class boats. Nine boats entered and the winner was Risto Lehtinen with Tapani Pakarinen & Viggo Hollander second and Harry Luukkanen third. The racing was at Lahti, about 60 miles inland from Helsinki and was run by the FCU and Vesisamilijat Canoe Club in August last. This year's National will be at Lahti on the weekend of August 10/11.

Some web sites that may be of interest to members:

• ACA National Sailing Committee
• Sugar Island
• International Canoe Federation's Sailing Committee
• Jim Luton Designs

Gunters, Sprits & Performance (DaveP)

Gunter rigs are certainly efficient and handsome but they are a bit complicated. The jaws on the gaff (or yard if you want to be pedantic) are always going wrong and the sail is a bit of a scrunched up mess when it's lowered. Also it takes longer than say a balanced lug to rig because you have to attach the luff to the mast. It's supposed to have less windage than a Bermudan when the sail is down but then it's fairly easy to lift a Bermudan's mast out altogether and though you can lift the gunter mast out, it has all this clutter more or less loosely attached to it. You would expect the performance to be somewhere between a lugsail and a Bermudan but for cruising purposes the performance between these two isn't that great anyway and a Gunter is more

Clyde canoe with Gunter main.

complicated (and so more expensive) than either. Still a Gunter sail with a curved gaff would look very nice...

What about a spritsail? Spritsails can be made to work well and they look nice. We haven't found that they work any better than lugsails and there are some irritating handling problems. The brails, which are often quoted as their chief virtue, are not really what you want on a canoe. When you furl your sail you don't want it at the top of the mast unless you have a very stable boat. Also the brails don't work well if you have a boom and reefing is a problem unless you have a halyard. That, however, is getting away from the simplicity, which is the attraction of the whole concept. We experimented with spritsails for an auxiliary rig on a boat that was biased a bit more towards paddling than our other

Two spritsails in a ketch rig.

boats. They worked well, just not quite as well as lugsails. I think if I had a beamy, stable, traditional dinghy, I would seriously consider a spritsail.

Some canoe sailors who don't race question the importance attached by others to speed and windward ability. I think these factors are significant for cruisers too. Most of our sailing is on narrow mountain lakes, either here in the Lake District or in Scotland. The wind tends to funnel along these so you spend a lot of time sailing to windward or downwind and not much on a reach. You can have a better day out if you can sail well to windward. This is partly skill and partly equipment but the best way to develop the skill is to race. Nearly all the keen cruisers also race, though there are a few racers who don't cruise much. I can't think of anywhere in Britain where windward ability wouldn't be important. It's different in a yacht, which is more at home on the open sea. There you stand a chance of sailing on a reach for a reasonable proportion of the time and in any case you can always use the engine if you have to go to windward.

Many canoeists don't really want to commit themselves to sailing. They claim that they can paddle upwind and just want some sort of improvised sail to sail downwind. What's the point? Paddling upwind is hard work and unpleasant and paddling downwind is easy. If you're going to sail at all it's

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