In this HubPage:

• Old Rigs and New Rigs
• Fundamentals of Rigging
• Basics of Sailing
• Safety Considerations
• Good and Bad of Where to Go
• Shopping Guide
• Links to more of my articles on Outdoor Gear
  

When I was a kid I never thought I'd be a sailor. I read about sailing constantly, building my mental view of the old days when the first glimpse of any ship was the gleam of its white wings on the horizon. I never expected to actually sail because it seemed like the only people in my generation who did that were the people who had money. I stuck to canoes, spending every free day I could pry away from school and farm chores drifting with the turtles on the local river and learning to run the rapids without tipping the boat over.

In the seventies when I settled down in Seattle for a few years, the world of yachts and fishing boats and submarines seemed too foreign for someone from the hills and hollows of the Ozark Mountains. I enjoyed watching from the docks but it was an alien world out there and I wasn't inclined to try it on my own. Before long, a friend who actually owned a sailboat--an Islander 28, big enough for cruising the Puget Sound in simulated comfort--invited me out for a day. It was a nearly typical Washington day in early Fall, with a stiff cold wind blowing in from the West and whitecaps on the water. As soon as we left the shelter of the harbor the wind caught the sails and heeled the boat and my friend watched carefully to see if I'd panic. It's fairly common for people to instinctively assume the boat's going over, the first few times it happens. When that didn't faze me he found little things for me to do, reasons for me to work my way up to the bow and help with the sails--again, no panic even though I felt like lead weights were tipping me constantly in random directions. I didn't know what anything did, or how any of it worked, or any of the nautical language he used, but it was great fun. When we got back to the dock he said I was a natural sailor and talked me into a spot on his racing crew. That's what you tell people in Seattle when you need crew. Everybody out there was a natural sailor at some point, early in their career before they knew how cold and wet and miserable they'd be. People hardly ever become sailors by choice.

Ten years later when I moved back to the midwest, I thought I was a pretty good sailor. I didn't expect to sail again, actually--even though there are plenty of lakes in the Midwest, you don't see too many sailboats on them. Sailing is tricky enough when you have wide open horizons to travel--when you take one into a narrow channel you need the kind of skill most people lack. Even if you have a sail rig, you pull it down and start up the diesel.

Some things are just in the blood in spite of circumstances, and sailing was like that for me. I didn't have money, so I built a canoe from wood and oiled canvas. It was too fragile for running rivers so I hauled it to the lake instead, spending days paddling through heat haze and mosquitoes and incessant summer wind. For a country empty of sailboats there certainly seemed to be a lot of wind. Experienced boaters kept telling me I was crazy to go out in my little leaf boat when there were whitecaps on the water, but I felt pretty solid in it. The sailing experience I had kept me going through conditions that would have stranded most people. I worked my way along the lee shores on bad days, tacking against the wind even without a sail, and always getting home eventually. I kept wishing I had a sailboat.

One of the worst decisions a man can make is to buy a boat. You can get welded to a boat in ways you don't connect to anything else. I knew people in Seattle who lost everything they had to bad luck and hard times and still kept their boats, suffering terribly for the sake of owning them. The mythical albatross in the Tale of the Ancient Mariner was probably a good boat with high monthly payments, in that fellow's real life. So I wisely kept my ambitions small and bought a canoe. I'd sunk my wood and canvas leaf boat twice, and even though it was an entertaining and challenging experience, and with a little tube of caulking and a bit of duck tape I was back on the water each time in under an hour, I wanted something more substantial that cut into the waves a little better. I bought a lake canoe, and without knowing it crept a little closer to the world of sails again.

Lake canoes are a different breed, a far cry from the little river runners most of us know. Some of the first important commerce in colonial America wound its way through the Great Lakes in the tall canoes of the Fur Trade. These boats were made for waves and wind, with hulls that cut through the water instead of sliding over it. It was a miserable and dangerous way to travel, and today, when people go boating for pleasure, there's little market for such a craft. Today, people build canoes for the rivers, with rounded hulls that spin on the stroke of a paddle. On a lake, in the wind, they'll do what my leaf boat did, as happy to go sideways as any other direction, and a string of white caps smashing into the bow will hammer them to a dead stop.

I managed to find one canoe builder with a model that looked interesting, derived from the Maine Guide style that used to be popular for travel on the northern lakes. The slight vee of the hull, the raised yet subtle flare of the narrow bow and stern, and the extra few inches at the gunnels let the boat hold a course against the wind, cut through waves instead of smashing into them, and tip without losing stability. My boat wasn't the monster that the trade canoes were, but it had enough of their character that I had confidence in it. Of course it cost me triple what an ordinary canoe would have cost, but I was being practical.

The only thing it really lacked was a sail. I think the day that convinced me to look for a sail rig was not any of the times when I slugged my way home through high winds and white caps, when a ten second rest meant ten feet of progress lost. There was always some satisfaction in that. It was the day I came home on nearly flat water with a gathering south wind behind me, and sitting up straight in the boat was enough to push me effortlessly to shore. That's when you really want a sail up. If you have a sail, you'll likely never see those conditions, but without one they seem pretty common.

A sail rig from Spring Creek Outfitters cost me almost half as much as the boat did. The one I bought looked a little experimental and at first I didn't have a lot of confidence in it. I added a cleat for the halyard and got a double ended box wrench for adjusting the daggerboards (with a loop through one end that kept it on my wrist even if I dropped it) but other than that, it needed no extreme improvements. I tested it carefully at first, without the sail up, putting the double pontoons out to their most stable settings and trying to tip the boat over. There seemed to be no way to do that, so I went sailing.

My first trip out was enough to remind me I didn't know everything I thought I knew about sailing. You aren't really a sailor until you own the boat and make the decisions. The other most important thing to know is that as soon as you put up sail, the wind will turn towards an inconvenient direction. I'd forgotten that old rule. It may not always be true, but you spend a lot more time beating against the wind than you do running before one. A run or a beam reach is fast and easy and fun, but it seems always to take you far away from home and then you have to beat your way back. A run of forty minutes develops into ten hours of beating on the return trip. Beating is a word sailors chose for a reason. It applies to this so well it's spooky.

People in canoes usually avoid things that tip the boat, because when canoes tip they tend to keep rolling and dump you into the water. There are only two kinds of canoeists, those who take pride in not dumping the boat and those who don't care. On rivers I'm the kind who doesn't care, but on lakes it can be a long way to shore when the boat's upside down. When you sail, you spend much of the time with the boat heeled over way past the angle that will roll a canoe, so any sailing rig that is actually practical will include outriggers. I spent the first few hours of my canoe sailing plowing along with one outrigger actually below the surface of the water, I heeled the boat over so far. With some practice I got better control, reset the outriggers close to the hull, and picked up speed. Except in extreme conditions, the outriggers hardly touch the water now. It's tempting to go out without them, but it's a safety feature you shouldn't leave behind.

To head into the wind, you have to set keelboards (sometimes called daggerboards) into the water alongside the hull. The paddle shaped blades provide sideways resistance so the boat isn't driven helplessly sideways by the wind. The air foil of the sail makes the boat move anyway, so the boat moves slightly upwind at an angle or tack. The better the boat is designed, the higher into the wind it will point and still make forward progress. This is the weak point of a canoe sailing rig--you probably won't be able to point much higher than 45 degrees and have any real forward motion. Without some strategy and skill, you'll go back and forth and feel like you're sailing, but you'll find yourself always in pretty much the same spot. It's an interesting way to impress your friends who think that sailing is easy--let them run the boat, do a few tacks, and then point out politely that the boat has come back exactly to where it started. The difference between right and wrong is subtle, but terribly important. The set of the keelboards is the key to all of it.

On a canoe, the keelboards are set almost but not quite amidships. You want the boat to move easily through the water, but not quite perfectly. If you have the keelboards at the right spot, when you drop sail and let the boat find its own course it will point into the wind and come to a stop. That's a safety feature some will ignore, but do so at your own risk. A perfectly balanced boat will actually sail itself, in stable conditions, and should you fall out, you watch it sail away alone. That's why a long rope trails behind most sailboats, especially the ones run by a single crewman. It's your last chance to stay with the boat if you fall overboard.

With this little rig, there's always something you can tweak. In very light winds you may want to raise the keelboard on the windward side and run with only one fin in the water, so to speak. In heavy winds you'd need all the traction you could get. The only real fault I found with the rig I bought was that ordinary motion on the port side would loosen the bolt that held the keelboard in place--it required regular attention but wasn't a terrible flaw. Subsequent models have been improved a bit but I haven't as yet purchased the upgrade. Coming from a racing yacht background, I'm always messing with the rig anyway, coaxing a little speed out of it and trying to point a little bit higher in the wind. I couldn't leave it alone if I tried.

I have done some fishing with the sail rig, trolling a lure behind me in a light breeze or dropping the sail and fishing with the rig down, but I decided long ago it was too much trouble to combine the two pasttimes. Above a certain number of lines in a boat, whether they are connected to sails or to fishing poles, there is only chaos and disaster. It's much more pleasant to pick one thing, sailing or fishing, and do that one thing. Try to do both and the fish will be absolutely mystified by what's happening up there.

If you sail, then sailing is all that's required. There's nothing quite like it, a sport that's pleasurable at any intensity level. On flat water with just a puff of breeze you can rig everything to just skim the water and cruise along in air that hardly even moves. In whitecaps you can go screaming down or across the wind nearly as fast as the waves move, and then spend some exciting hours beating your way back. There's always a new problem to figure out, and you don't get home until you do. Paddling is very seldom the right answer--in almost every situation you can get there faster with the sail up, unless the wind is absolutely dead. It's probably intriguing to watch a canoe sailor in dead air, because when the sail comes down and the paddle goes out, it will immediately feel like the wind has begun again--so the paddles come in and the sail goes up. Then it's clear the wind is gone, so the sail comes down and the paddles come out, ad infinitum. People who don't sail often think sailors have lost their minds. Possibly it's true.

This sort of canoeing isn't for everybody.   Sailing requires determination and a different kind of skill than it takes to run a river, although experience in that other art does help.  In my part of the country where free flowing rivers used to exist, now there are hundreds of square miles of permanently flooded valleys--our impoundment lakes. Paddling a canoe seems like the least practical way to traverse those waters. Lakes seem like a crowded and even dangerous place for a canoeist, out there amidst the powerboats and fishermen, but with a sailing rig a new realm opens up. I load my tent and my camping gear in the boat, ignoring the whispered comments of the bass boatsmen who think I'm sure to die, and set sail for quiet waters, spending a day or two chasing the wind and camping in whatever quiet creek mouth opens up for me. Sometimes I see people and sometimes not. There's a lot of solitude and space on American lakes if you take the time to find it. Part of that comes simply from moving at a different pace than the rest of the crowd. If everybody is going someplace and moving faster than you are, pretty soon you have the place to yourself again.

The thing non sailors find it hard to understand is that even though sailors are always going somewhere, they're never really trying to get there. They're already where they want to be: they're sailing.

It's easy to get cocky when you're playing around in a small boat. Putting a sail on one can get you into trouble quickly. Even with something as safe as the Spring Creek clamp on sail rig, you head back in time to the days of self reliance when you take a small boat offshore. Remember the basics.

Wear a life vest. Take a flotation cushion along. Make a survival kit with foul weather gear, first aid supplies, food, water, map and compass. Take tools to work on the rig--a multi tool of good quality is probably as much as you'll need. Don't depend on other people to get you out of trouble. Even if you only shipwreck yourself on the opposite shore, across half a mile of water from the parking lot where your car is sitting, you may need to know an alternate way home. You can get trapped for hours by bad weather. If a thunderstorm keeps you off the water until after nightfall, you'll need running lights to get home safely. Don't forget a good boat horn, one that sounds like you're big. Lots of motorboaters don't look where they're going. Sound off at them like you mean it.

Learn to sail before you wander miles and miles from your launch point. Downwind runs are fun, but you have to get back somehow. Amplify the return time by ten, if you're heading upwind on the way home. If you aren't good at sailing yet, that's conservative. Don't forget a good paddle just in case your skills don't match up to the weather. Sailing isn't like most sports, in which you know when you'll be back and where you'll wind up. Even with a plan, the weather rules this activity. You might be gone for a couple of hours, or you might be back at two in the morning. I've been on many races like that in the Puget Sound, when the time limit runs out about ten hours before the last boats come in. Without wind a sailboat doesn't move very fast. Don't accept a tow from somebody under power unless they're willing to putt home at trawling speed. Canoes oscillate on a tow rope.

Above all, pay attention to the weather. The Spring Creek rig, in able hands, can safely handle wind speeds up to 35 mph. I've been out in 45 mph winds and have regretted trying. It's exciting, but things start to come apart. In summer waters it might be fun to tempt fate a little bit before you yank down the sail and head for shore, but in icy winter waters it can be deadly. Without a wet suit you may well decide to stay home for the winter.

The Spring Creek rig is one of the simplest sail rigs imaginable, but hardly anyone can handle it the first time out.  If you know someone who sails, ask them to teach you.  This is the kind of skill that traditionally is handed down from person to person, and is not easily learned from books.  Without a teacher, read books first.  Practice in the boat on dry land, maybe parked in your back yard in dry dock.  Run a few drills on basics like raising sail, dropping sail, tacking and gybing.  The silliness will pay off when things happen too fast to think about. 

Impoundments were not created with sailboats in mind.  Usually surrounded by forests and high ridgetops, wind churns over these lakes.  Straight line and steady breezes are rare and patchy.  Holding a course in air like that takes nearly constant attention.

But, it can also be lots of fun.  The things I would never have learned on the Puget Sound were mandatory on Bulls Shoals Lake in the Ozarks.  My favorite challenge was a channel on the south side of a narrow rock ridge called the Devil's Backbone.  On the other side of the Bone, the lake was wide enough to be open to a good patch of north wind, but when that wind hit the Bone it split into a series of six whirlwinds, stationary in the channel.  To sail through them you had to manage six complete 360 degree wind shifts in less than a quarter of a mile of water.  On my best day I made it through four before I had to drop the sail and grab the paddle.   

There really are good sailing lakes in the Midwest.  Even in Kansas where you wouldn't expect anything but wheat, people love to sail.  Wide impoundments in open country have excellent and dependable wind; the shallow landscape gives boats plenty of maneuvering room.  My favorite place to go in Arkansas is Lake Quachita, more than two miles across at its widest point, with clear water, beautiful underwater beds of hydrilla weed, dozens of islands, and an extremely liberal camping policy.  On that Lake you can camp anywhere you like.  Definitely take a map and compass, because even if you know the area the fog can close in on you in minutes.  In murky weather you won't be able to see the shoreline.  It's great. 

Tablerock Lake near Branson, Missouri, where I used to work, is one of the busiest waterways in the world--or so it seems when you're in a tiny sailing canoe surrounded by the powerboat yachts and water skiers and bass fishermen charging about in the fishing competitions. Aside from the crowds (which you can avoid by going a few miles in any direction from town) the winds there are tricky even on a good day. Shifty, gusty, streaky, swirling winds are normal. In rough weather add waves--not just whitecaps, but occasionally even standing waves built up in little stationary rows of two or three, five feet or more high from trough to crest. Great fun, but tricky in a small boat. I've had great times sailing there, but I've also had some of the closest calls ever on those waters.

Shoreline is typically steep and brush choked, unless it's the equally common hundred foot vertical limestone cliff. Beaches are rare, and usually rocky and muddy. Close to shore the snags of submerged dead trees lurk in murky waters. In the channels, in safe and deep water, you'll need to constantly watch out for powerboats.

Camping is limited to areas in local parks, and usually a long walk from anyplace you could leave your boat. There are secluded areas where a sneaky person might spend a night unseen--up many of the creek mouths you'll find gravel bars where you can pull out, out of sight and out of mind, but it takes some exploring to find them. As the water level rises and falls sixty or more feet with the seasons and the weather, one year can be great camping and the next one, it's all underwater.

It's a tough place to learn sailing, and the results can be disastrous if you don't use good sense. Several years ago a fellow finished building his little sailboat about two o'clock on a windy January night, and just couldn't wait to put it in the water. With two friends and a generous amount of beer, he set out on a maiden voyage that must have gone very well until the boat smashed against the cliffs on the opposite shore. None of them made it home. Only a few hundred yards from a house on the cliff top, they might as well have gone down in the Bering Straits.

Sailing is great fun, but be careful about it. The wilderness, as my skipper in Seattle told me on our first race together, is always about ten feet from the shoreline.

Best bet, if you have plenty of money, is to buy an actual sailing canoe or dinghy. They go fast, aren't too big to trailer, and you get efficiency you won't get with a canoe or kayak upgraded with a clamp on rig. In a real sailboat, even a little one, you can tack without coming to a dead halt and having to oar yourself into position with the tiller. With my rig from Spring Creek that's standard operating procedure. The advantage is that I can use my boat on rivers as well as lakes, and I'm well satisfied with the multi purpose approach.

Chesapeake Light Craft offers a number of beautiful owner-built kits and designs if you want the absolute best and have the time it takes to build one. Not only can you choose plans for several versions of prams, canoes, and dinghies, conversion kits for kayaks (kayak to sailing catamaran) are also on their menu.

Many people want sails only as an auxiliary system, for lake crossings in the portage areas of the North. Even a little puffball spinnaker floating on the bow lets you effortlessly leave paddlers behind. Spirit Sails makes downwind rigs that don't require much more than putting up and taking down. Spirit Sails bases their product on a traditional Polynesian rig, but WindPaddle Sails has an even simpler bare bones design that even die-hard paddlers can pop up in a flash. It's about as compact a rig as you can get, which makes a lot of sense in a kayak with limited storage.

Invest a little or a lot; vow to learn the time tested skill of sailing, or just decide to pop a little downwind bubble and amaze your friends. Sailing and small boats go together. Always have; always will. Have fun and be safe.