wisely decided to motor and at first we couldn't catch him but then he developed engine problems. The others landed to wait while Oliver and I tried to tow him. I had little doubt that we would be able to do this as we had 66 sq ft of sail and seemed to have power to spare.
Our optimism was misplaced however. Even with Oliver and Paul paddling we were loosing ground on the tacks. I thought we spent only a short time on this attempt but James, who was standing in the river holding his boat, thought it was about an hour. We were eventually rescued by a man in a dinghy with an outboard who was living on a rather nice wooden Maurice Griffiths cutter moored nearby. He kindly offered to tow Warin's and Paul's boats back to the campsite. Paul went with the boats and the rest of us waited on the shore for the worst of the current to slacken. It had been very gloomy all day but it seemed to be getting noticeably darker by the time we set off again, Warin travelling in James' boat.
Sailing was much easier than before we stopped but we soon ran out of daylight. We were anxious to get back and this meant carrying more sail than Jan would have liked, though the outriggers enabled her to do so. I realised I had never sailed a canoe in the dark before. It was difficult to see each other and to see how close to the shore we were for tacking. I thought we still had some distance to go and was settling into a tired sailing trance when we spotted a light being waved on the shore. It wasn't wreckers - it was Paul! It wasn't long before we were all having a nice cup of tea in James' tipi.
Did we learn anything from the trip? Maybe one or two things…
(Many thanks are due to JamesB for organising this meet.)
On The Origins Of Lateen Rig For Canoes (DaveP)
It seems strange that so many canoeists should consider the lateen to be the "correct" or "traditional" rig for a canoe, especially when its inability to be reefed make it so unsuitable for the purpose, at least in this country. For the first few decades after the invention of the recreational sailing canoe the preferred rigs were lugs and batwings.
The adoption of the lateen in America is even odder when it is realised that there is virtually no tradition of lateen use in that country. So far as I know the only lateens used in America were those of Italian fishermen on San Francisco bay and it is unlikely that they would have inspired East Coast Anglo-Saxon canoeists. Also the traditional Mediterranean lateen has no boom.
Native Americans used either square sails or, later, spritsails on their canoes. A popular design of canoe lugsail had quite a high peak and a pair of full battens. The top one of these meets the luff just below the throat and when the sail is fully reefed it looks like a boomed lateen.
I wonder if a "proper" canoe sailor gave his cast-off lugsail to an open canoeist to play with and suggested that he should only use it fully reefed, or perhaps the bottom part of the lugsail was damaged so the open canoeist cut it off and didn't worry about reefing as it was reefed already. It worked well enough in the predictable conditions on the other side of the Atlantic so other people copied it and it became the orthodox rig.
Alternatives To Towing (SteveR)
When I first conceived this article, it was intended to be a short article about towing a stricken canoe; however, given the considerable technical difficulties involved in towing, I decided that a short article on alternatives to towing might be more fruitful.
Why tow?
Typically, towing might be seen as a solution to one of the following problems. Mechanical failure, crew can't sail in the prevailing conditions, crew can't paddle in the prevailing conditions. In many instances these problems are best solved by one of the strategies below…
Avoid the situation
There is a joint responsibility here for trip leaders to take all reasonably foreseeable factors into account, and for trip participants to prepare themselves and their equipment in line with the group's competency guidelines for the level of trip being undertaken.
Abandon a boat
A boat can be temporarily abandoned, and the crew can continue as a passenger in another boat. I am considering adding a chain and padlock to my emergency kit for this eventuality.
Add a paddler
A passenger from another boat can swap to the stricken boat to add extra power, so that the boat can continue under paddle power.
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