High performance outrigger part 1
Sam Frosh reports on the design and construction of an outrigger Moth!
After more than two decades sailing, designing and building sailboards including a six metre long tandem I decided to go back to my sailing roots, that is a Moth dinghy. However I needed a craft for two as my son has accompanied me on my sailing journey for the last 20 years. The other problem was that when I last sailed Australian Moths they were 1.3 metre wide…
New Zealand on 100 snails a day
Tim Anderson has posted another canoe sailing adventure - this time from New Zealand. As usual, he nearly dies a few times (infection and hypothermia), lives on snails and oatmeal, experiences altered states of consciousness, camps where he shouldn’t, meets interesting locals, and returns home with stomach parasites. Hard not to envy him. This time he sails Gary Dierking’s Ulua, which is practically a yacht compared to his previous…
A bloody fine first day with a crab claw 2
Part Two of Wade Tarzia’s epic first sail with a crab claw rig.
Bleeding while you are swimming is disarming and kind. What seems to be water dripping in my face is actually something horrific—that it never stopped dripping should have clued me in, but I’m still pondering that nth dimensional paradigm. Somewhere a baby is crying. I know this sounds like a cliche because, in all the bad novels, as soon as something interesting…
A bloody fine first day with a crab claw 1
Part One of an account originally posted on the ProaFile Discussion Group. We all thought it was a wicked good story. By Wade Tarzia.
My girlfriend tells the story about her father who saw someone waste a few hundred dollars on some unworkable scheme, and he wisely observed it had been money well spent because “how often can you get a lesson that lasts a life-time for just a few hundred bucks?” My own father, well, I think he would…
The Case for the Steering Oar
By Gary Dierking
Steering is one of the great challenges of proa design. The one who finally designs a steering system that a) shunts easily, b) controls the canoe both while at speed and while stationary during a shunt, c) is hydrodynamically efficient, d) is immune to underwater hazards, and e) is simple and foolproof, will have discovered the proa “holy grail”. Could it be that the Pacific Islanders have already invented such a…
Testing with models - part 2
From the Proafile Archives. Originally posted 1999
After my exciting but ultimately unsatisfying flirtation with anti-heeling Bruce foils for my proa scale model, I went out and bought my first computer. We all know what a huge time sink that is, so the proa and any model testing pertaining to it went onto a very remote back burner. This turned out to be perfect timing, since once I discovered the internet, I gradually found other…
Testing with models - part 1
From the Proafile Archives. Originally posted 1999
After the disastrous first sail of my 26’ proa Rozinante, and after waiting a suitable time for my emotional wounds to heal, I decided I needed to do some research and testing. Research was easy, since there is practically nothing out there to read on proa design. One notable exception is the Amateur Yacht Research Society (AYRS) which has published many a paper about proas over the…
