Below is a list of proa rigs under active development today. As you can see, there is hardly a consensus as of yet! None of the rigs are perfect, and all have various strengths and weaknesses. The Rig Ratings Table is a first attempt to quantify three rig performance areas: Performance, Handling, and Safety. The table is the result of some spirited discussion on the subject by the Proa File International mailing list. Many thanks to…
Brian Schulz of Cape Falcon Kayak in Oregon has been sailing Fog and Thunder, his skin-on-frame version of a Hawaiian outrigger sailing canoe. “Adapting the hawaiian outrigger sailing canoe for skin on frame construction has been a powerful and revelatory experionce for me… at 20 feet long and less than 150 lbs fully rigged it has renewed my faith in the endless adaptability if skin on frame technology. Building it mostly from scraps I…
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…
The Nigel Irens designed “Rustic Schooner” catamaran was launched from Constellation Yachts in January 2005. I really like this boat - it proves that modern multihulls don’t all need to be hi-tech spaceships. “Sequoya” is a 64’ LOA x 28’ beam day charter cat built from plywood - and it’s one of the few big cats that will actually improve the view of the harbor in which it’s anchored. Check out the photo gallery at Constellation Yachts.
Manu Kai [Bird of the Sea] is a voyaging double canoe: a sailing catamaran for raids, beach cruising, and coastal sailing. It’s designed to be simple, tough, swift, safe, environmentally friendly, and economical to own and to manufacture. It is the sort of small cruiser that I wish were on the market—that Hobie Cat® would make.
LOA: 23’
Beam (sailing): 12’-0”
Beam (trailer): 8’-6”
Weight (approx): 750 lbs.
Draft: 1’-11”
SA: 205 sq.…
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…
PROAFILE is an online journal devoted to outrigged sailing canoes and especially the proa, that unique and fascinating invention of the seafaring peoples of Oceania. We are interested in all aspects of outrigger sailing vessels, including research, history, design, building, sailing, racing and cruising.
More than those of any other island group, the sailing craft of the Marianas Islands, by reason of their swiftness and elegance,…
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…
By John Dalziel
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…
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…
