Crab claws on ice
A report by Peter Adrian from Sweden on his crab claw rigged iceboat:
Am sailing my second season my modified iceboat: an Isabella Classic with 5m2 (54 sq. ft.) crab claw sail. Just a win-win over all compared against the same boats with conventional Bermuda rig. Just one thing I’ve noticed is she no longer lifts the windward runner at over 60km/h (37 mph).
The yard is made fast to the apex of a bipod mast and fixed to the hull at…
Tarawa With Spinnaclaw
Gary Dierking is experimenting with the “spinnaclaw” - a crab claw rigging idea that I proposed way back in 2008. It’s pretty cool to see someone take an idea sketch and make it real - thanks Gary! Apparently, there is both good and bad news…
Read about it here on Outrigger Sailing Canoes.
Quill - a crab claw tacking proa
QUILL is an innovative tacking proa designed and built by Kim Fisher in England. The experimental vessel features a crab claw sail and a unique sliding outrigger arrangement. Kim writes:
Firstly, I would like to say a BIG thank you to Proafile for giving me mountains of useful information and encouragement to actually build this boat. I have been accessing your pages for over 3 years and this boat design is the result. (*blushing*…
Mareinoa: a proa for cruising
A report on a new cruising proa build by Manfred Meier, designed by Othmar Karschulin of multihull.de. Thanks to Manfred and Othmar for the submission! —Editor
I became aware of the proa when reading a book about multihulls, named “Mehrrumpfboote” (multihulls) written by Klaus D. Kurtz. I expected that this book would deal with catamaran and trimarans only. But instead it started with a report of William Dampier, one of the earliest…
The Sultans of Wing
Just to prove that we aren’t complete small boat snobs over here at Proa File, here’s a yacht that’s well over our usual cut-off in length and opulence. This is the sort of thing that Nigel Irens Design has been up to lately, and we have to say it: the A-65 is probably the loveliest luxury sailing catamaran launched since the turn of the century.
The challenging brief from a client in the Emirates was to design a truly exceptional…
The Crab Claw Comeback
The crab claw as an ideal wind-electric hybrid yacht rig
Way back around the turn of the century, there was a lot of excitement about the potential of the native Pacific island canoe rig, often called the “crab claw” sail, so called because the plan form resembles the claw of a crab. The rig has some serious advantages, see here, but also some serious limitations, the primary one being that it is not as weatherly as a modern sloop.…
Navy wingsail tri up for auction
As part of a government liquidation, the U.S. Department of Defense is auctioning off a 50-foot sailboat to the highest bidder.
But this vessel isn’t what you’d expect from a former Navy craft. The three-hulled, high-performance Contour 50 boat, which is now in Harbor Island, was used for “experimental training and recreational purposes,” according to Liquidity Services, Inc.
Built in the mid 2000s, the craft has undergone some…
Proa Rig Options: The Sloop
The sloop is the rig of choice on 90% of all modern sailboats. Why not on proas as well? Here’s why.
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,…
Proa Rig Options: Gibbons Rig
The story of this rig begins in Hawaii, with Euell - “Have you ever eaten a pine tree?” - Gibbons, a half century ago. Now, thanks to a renewed interest in proas and the easy flow of information on the Internet, the rig has received some new attention, and looks to become a very good proa rig indeed.
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…
Proa Rig Options: Crab Claw
An overview of the potentials and problems of the remarkable rig of the native Pacific proa.
The Traditional Oceanic sprit rig (aka crab claw) has, in Western eyes, been considered a romantic if not particularly effective rig that most likely compared to the Mediterranean lateen in aerodynamic performance. That is, until famed sailboat aerodynamics researcher C. A. Marchaj published this startling graph in his research paper Planform…
