Hello all,

I’m desperately trying to start my next boatbuilding project. My current thinking is heavily influenced by Gary Dierking’s designs for the Ulua, T2 and Wa’apa. Every morning I awake knowing which to build, by lunch I’ve modified the design in my head a bit, and by bedtime I’m on to a different model all together. This must stop. I have wood, I have garage space and summer isn’t that far off. Here are my issues/questions as succinctly as I can put them:

Criteria:
1) I want to play with shunting (at some point), although I’m okay to begin with a tacking outrigger.

2) I would prefer to try a boat building method other than plywood/chine construction (contemplating both strip built and skin on frame), but if the Wa’apa is the right boat for my needs, so be it.

Questions:
1) I know the Ulua is designed asymmetrically fore and aft; if I were to reproduce the station molds from one end to the other and create a symmetrical hull fore and aft, would it accommodate a shunting rig, with proper foils and reversible ama?

2) Given the above, would the symmetrical canoe still take a tacking rig, with the the appropriate foils and mast step location?

3) What happens if you put a tacking rig on an asymmetric hull like the Dierking T2?

4) Am I foolish to consider using an expert’s purpose built designs like the Ulua or the T2 as a jumping off point for my own inexperienced exploration? Should I just stick with the Wa’apa because it is designed to be either a tacking outrigger or a shunting proa with minimal modification?

Thank you in advance for any guidance you may provide.

Sincerely,
Eric Owsley

Hi Eric,

I hear you on bouncing from idea to idea until it drives you crazy. Shunting Ulua sounds like a good idea, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. But why don’t you email mr Dierking himself?

If you want to be on the water quickly a strip build may not be the best option, someone that’s done both would know for sure.

There is a T2 with a tacking rig video on Youtube, I think Carlos Solanilla or something similar was the builder, who tried it out just to see. In theory not a great idea though, maybe with a lot less asymmetry.

Don’t think following someone elses design even partly is a bad idea. I just finished a canoe based on wa’apa, and I can tell you that the parts that weren’t “based on” took twice as long to make! The less you have to figure out yourself the better.

Greetings,
Thomas

tdem - 27 March 2013 01:03 AM

...I hear you on bouncing from idea to idea until it drives you crazy. Shunting Ulua sounds like a good idea, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. But why don’t you email mr Dierking himself? ...There is a T2 with a tacking rig video on Youtube, I think Carlos Solanilla or something similar was the builder, who tried it out just to see. In theory not a great idea though, maybe with a lot less asymmetry….

—- I think you could shunt an Ulua even though there is a very slight longitudinal hull asymmetry.But, I do not believe that starting with a tacking hull and then shutning it is a good idea. At least with a symmetrical hull you can both tack and shunt—it might be a better fall-back position. Build a Wa’Apa, see if you like it as a shunting proa, and if not, it is still a good tacking outrigger.

Carlos did use a T2-derived hull for an exeriment with a double-outrigger (“paraw”) set up using 5 inch diameter long bamboo amas.  It was an interesting boat.  He had the T2 hull and not enough time to build a new hull meant for tacking, so he made a gamble with this one.  He invited me to crew with him in the 2009 Everglades Challenge, so we gambled together.  The asymmetric proa could be made to tack, but that does not mean we should have asked it to. We had light winds and easy conditions, when a boat will do pretty much anything you want it to, so it did not get a very good test.  We had to abort the event at the end of the first day because of a hull leak we could not find and fix.  Also, a T2 hull with two men and two sets of camping gear and food/water for a week is a bit much for that slender hull, though as you can see from the Grillabong blog, one man has been sailing his T2 for months down the Mexcian and Central American coast quite successfully.

So I think you ought to start your own experiments with something like a Wa’Apa or perhaps a quicky and dirty hull of your own design.  Then if you find the shunting proa bug has bitten you, plan on the next better boat into which you will put some resources and keep around for a while and really get to know it.—Wade