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Canoeing To Australia (GrahamH)
In December 2004, Veronica and I and our younger daughter flew to Australia, to visit our elder daughter and her husband, who are spending a year in Sydney. We made a couple of modest canoe trips. At Nelson's Bay, north of Sydney, we went with a guide on a short trip on a calm sea under blazing sun in self-bailing 'Ocean' kayaks, which are stable and give you a wet bottom. The next time was on a branch of Sydney Harbour, on a dull and windy day. At first, I was pleased to see that I had a 'proper' sea kayak -although obviously a beamier one than many, as I could get into it. We were sent off by ourselves, without spraydecks. When we got further out where there was a choppy sea, I began to think about Lyme Regis. However, I did not take any water on board but, with a distinctly 'tippy' feeling and the wind trying to tear the paddle out of my hands, I quickly lost any regrets that I had never taken up sea kayaking. We all got back safely.
Sydney has some fine museums, among them the Australian National Maritime Museum. A small display which particularly interested me was one about Oskar Speck, who travelled in a sailing canoe from Germany to Australia. As a young man in 1932, he decided to leave Germany where there was no work, to try to find work as a mining engineer in Cyprus. His canoe was a folding double Pionier, rather like a Klepper, 17'10" long and 32" wide, paddled with a double paddle. It was steered with a foot-controlled rudder and had a gaff sail of 16.5 sq. feet. It was converted to a single-seater with bags for luggage and provisions and two five-gallon water tanks.
Speck set off from Ulm on 13 May 1932, with a small amount of money, and paddled down the Danube. He slept in the canoe under a cover, except where he could find free accommodation. He arrived in Greece in March 1933 and learned to sail on the Aegean, along the Turkish coast. He crossed to Cyprus, a distance of 45 nautical miles. Here he decided to continue his journey. He reached Syria, after a two-day open sea crossing of 65 nautical miles. He journeyed overland with his folded canoe to the Euphrates. From here he continued down the river and then along the Persian Gulf to India. He generally travelled 30 to 40 miles a day and stated that he could manage 6 m.p.h. under sail and 4 m.p.h. when paddling. His only capsizes were when landing in heavy surf. He visited local dignitaries and took photographs of himself and kayak with local boat people, so his voyage is reliably documented. During his travels, he damaged or wore out four canoes, which were replaced by Pionier, which paid him some money.
After reaching Burma in 1936, he unsuccessfully attempted to qualify for the Berlin Olympics 10,000 metres kayak event. He continued along the coast of Malaya and then island-to-island through what is now Indonesia before reaching Australia in September 1939, where he was arrested as an enemy alien. He spent the war in a POW camp and remained in Australia after the war. He died in 1995. He did not write a book and his voyage, which must be the longest canoe trip ever, is little known. The Maritime Museum has published an article on it with photographs, which I intend to send to 'Paddles Past'.
Source For Canoe Outrigger Design (ArntA)
Having sailed multihulls for 40+ years, now sailing a trimaran canoe, and in an initial stage of designing a slightly larger trimaran, I am of course interested in outrigger design. As I have not seen that you are aware of the vast amount of information the publications of the AYRS (the Amateur Yacht Research Society) organization represents, I would like to draw your attention to this. I happened to become a member of this UK-based but highly international organization about
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