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Surfing With Hemp

From OceanGreen Surfboards: The aim of OceanGreen is to produce custom surfboards that are 100% bio-derived, that is, made entirely from natural materials. Most surfers feel compromised by having to use equipment that is ecologically damaging in what should be a natural environment. OG give surfers the choice of showing respect for their environment as they interact with it.

OG aims to replace each of the surfboard's 3 base materials with an environmentally friendly alternative which has equal or better qualities for the job. Using Hemp cloth instead of fibreglass, we have started the process. Combined with polystyrene foam and epoxy resin, this produces boards which are lighter, stronger and greener. OG are continually sourcing new products to replace the foam and resin whilst developing new methods to use older, sounder natural products.

Green Boatbuilding - Hemp

From TreeHugger: We have profiled so many products made from hemp, thought it might be useful to provide a little background as to what makes it so significant. If hemp has a downside, its the mythology and hype that has attached itself to the name. It is hugely versatile but the claims that it can save the world, all on its own, are rather misleading. Eco Tip: Hemp

Rig Options - Bolger

The Bolger proa rig echos the unique symmetry of the proa: the airflow reverses direction during a shunt, just like the water flow on the hull. The rig has many powerful advantages that have led to a 50-year series of attempts to develop it into a useful sailboat rig. It is a wonderful example of the maxim: "In theory, theory equals practice. In practice, it doesn't." Though the rig has become known in proa circles as "The Bolger Rig" due to the fact that it was Bolger's proa cartoon that became widely known, the rig in fact was invented in the 1960's by members of the Amateur Yacht Research Society (AYRS) who thought so highly of its potential to christen it the "AYRS Sail".

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The New Age of Sail

NewScientist.com news service: The coming of steam sent the world's great sailing fleets into decline. The internal combustion engine finally finished them off. So it would be a strange twist of fate if the age of sail was resurrected by what amounts to a child's toy. Newscientist.com

Rig Options - Gibbons

Writer and naturalist Euell Gibbons was living in Hawaii and dining on the jungle flora and fauna in the 1950's. He soon realized that "an island is a small body of land surrounded by the need for a boat", so he set out to build himself one. Euell had been a professional boatbuilder, so he knew something of what he was about.

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Rig Options - Balestron

Of all the Western rigs that have been tried on proas, the balestron rig (also known as the Aerorig®, balanced rig, swing rig, and EasyRig®) has the most promise. This rig has been around for decades, and is slowly making inroads into the notoriously conservative yachting establishment.

Whatever the rig's advantages for tacking craft, they pale in comparison to what it can do for proas; it makes shunting as simple and stress-free as tacking your Hunter 32 around the bay. This rig makes single-handing a big proa a reality, and opens the door for proas to become a serious alternative for the cruising sailor.

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Rig Options - Sloop

Rigging a proa as a sloop is a true blending of East and West. The proa is considered the pinnacle of Pacific canoe design, and the sloop is often considered the finest invention of Western "yachting". Brilliant in their own context, what happens when we creatively recombine their DNA?

First consider the sloop. Beautiful, efficient, and handy, the sloop has been the darling of the yachting world for going on one hundred years. Refined over the years, and lavished with the latest hi-tech materials, the rig is versatile enough to please all-out racers and laid-back cruisers. When set up with a self-tending jib, the rig is simplicity itself to tack, needing only a gentle hand on the tiller to guide the boat through stays. When rigged as a racer, there are enough sails to change, winches to grind and strings to tweak to keep a large crew very busy. The rig works for small day sailors all the way up to 100' mega-yachts.

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Rig Options - Schooner

Though the schooner has several good points, the most important one as far as proas are concerned is the ability to vary the fore and aft CE (center of effort) by trimming the sails. This ability cannot be overstated enough, in my opinion. Proas are, by their nature, "rudder-challenged". That is, the necessity of shunting makes operating a rudder a problem. You may think that I am talking about the problem of shifting the rudder from one end to the other during each shunt. Though this is an issue, twin rudders, perhaps counter-rotating, at each end of the hull, can handily solve this problem. No, the bigger problem is that a proa must come to a complete and dead stop for each and every shunt.

As any sailor knows, allowing a sailboat to come to a stop is allowing it to get out of control, because with no water flowing past, the rudder is rendered useless. All Western craft are fundamentally designed with the unspoken assumption that the craft is NEVER to come to a complete halt while sailing. When this does unintentionally occur, the boat is said to be "caught in irons" - a colorful expression that illustrates the Western sailor's dread of the situation.

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The Case for the Steering Oar

My first experience with a steering oar was not auspicious. In Coast Guard boot camp I managed to talk my way into steering one of the big whaleboats used for training and racing. We must have had all the strong guys on one side as my best effort was not enough to prevent ramming one of the other boats; causing an automatic disqualification and my demotion to rowing guy. It took quite a few years before I realized that a steering oar is much more than a rudder. If I had used the oar function I could have avoided the collision.

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The Zen of Proa

When you stop to think of it, sailing and sailboats are a rather peculiar passion, one which non-sailors rarely understand. We are often asked: why sails; why do we not simply use an outboard? We have, of course, quite a number of personal responses, which are essentially statements that we enjoy it. But beneath that lies another, broader truth: within many hobbies such as sailing lie important reservoirs of alternative knowledge our culture, usually for no expressed reason, feels necessary to keep at hand, even in the absence of obvious purpose.

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