Yeah I had the same thought about a year ago after a friend turned me toward CLC & I saw pictures of the AW. Went to their in-water day in Madison WI to see one I could try on for size.

When I posted this question here replies fit my belief that though it certainly is do-able, it's going to be a trial-by-fit endeavor as well as a compromise if successful. Some kind of lee board would be a big help; once that proved proof-of concept & gave an idea of where best to locate side slip resistance, a daggerboard might be a better solution while requiring a through-hull trunk.

Tuning center of sail effort to center of hull resistance for safe & easy handling is tricky enough in any design.

   spclark,

I figure if you have to add a center board, it isnt worth the cost.  The kayak setups have those rudder looking pieces off of each side just behind the sail, do you think these wouldnt suffice?

I dont really understand exactly why that particular kit is going to work on a kayak and not the Wherry.  Is it due to the greater beam and freeboard of the AW, greater draft?  I read those work on canoes as well, and I thought, functionally, AW is very similar.  Perhaps being similar isnt enough.

Really this is only a stop gap, I bought an AW with rowrig, but want to sail.  I am not currently in a position to build or buy a more suitable vessel and thought about selling the oars and rig to offset the cost of the kayak unit so as to at least be able to play around with sails, even if it isnt the most effecient sailing craft.

Robert,

The AW was designed as a rowing boat. Its function is to slde through the water with the least resistance and to carry its way between strokes. To achieve those things, it is narrow and a bit tippy, because it assumes that you'll sit on the centerline and won't deliberately try to unbalance or capsize it with things like sails --- which are notorious for trying to tip boats over. Adding a daggerboard, centerboard, or leeboards and a rudder will not make it less easy to capsize.

If you wan't to sail, get a boat that has been designed to sail. A boat with a hull that is designed to resist the tipping moment of sails and that will give you some chance of not capsizing in a gust. I'm not saying that you cannot make an AW sail, but that you cannot make an AW sail well or safely. If you could, CLC would have provided a sailing kit for it.

Regards,

Dick

  Dick,

Thanks for the explanantion, that all makes sense to me.  I am curious though, and at this point its almost entirely academic, what then is different about a kayak that suits it to this paricular kit and how that differs from the AW.  Because your break down sounds to me as though it could largely apply to a kayak, except I suppose they are more maneurverable, and more nible, and while more likely to be pushed of course, less likely to be prone to tipping?

Thanks again,

Robert

Robert,

That is a very good question. I personally would not sail a canoe (without an outrigger) or a kayak. Under the best of circumstances, Kayaks are tender boats. They are light and nimble and the occupant usually outweighs the kayak by a wide margin. I my much younger days, I raced dirt bikes. I was heavier than the bikes I rode and I could toss them around pretty much at will. I could never have tossed a Harley around that way.

I suspect that kayaks are the "dirt bikes" of boats and they are also designed so a capsize is not a catastrophe. Every competent kayaker know how to right a kayak. I also believe that the movable ballast represented by the kayaker can keep the kayak upright under circumstances that might be tragic in a boat like the AW.

Regards,

Dick

   Kits consist of a mast, sail, a cross-beam and brackets to attach it to the kayak, a pair of inflatable floats, a rudder, control rope, and a leeboard (source: writingsmyessays.com). With a rig like this a kayak can tack upwind. If somebody tries some technologies in practice let me know, please. Really interested in results!

OK, so I went ahead and bought a Kayaksailor mainsail rig for my Annapolis Wherry Tandem that I built a few years ago.  Just FYI, I am an OK dingy sailor and used to sail on the college team a hundred years ago, but not much of a rigging master so am doing a lot of trial and error that someone with more experience might skip. (Well let's face it, someone with more experience would probably skip the whole thing as not a good idea.)

The good: The sail rig itself is very nicely made.  It is quite a gadget in that you pull on two ropes in succession to raise the mast and sail combination and then release the two ropes to allow the mast and sail to fold back up into a neat package.  But it all feels quite solid and nicely made.  So far, after a few uses, it still operates fine and remains untangled.  When raised on a gusty day it was easy to catch the wind and zip around a bit. There were gusts up to the 15mph range, but it never felt tippy or scary. There are two sideboards that tip into the water lined up with the base of the mast.  They are on adjustable rods to be able to fit the width of various boats and while not wide enough to fit at the widest part of the wherry they were wide enought to fit in the most conventient spot for my test. They 'worked' but feel undersized for a boat this big.  Of course the mast is hugely undersized as well so maybe that is all OK.

The less good: Steering with the rudderless Wherry is to be done with oars, but since I wanted to sit forward, the oars would be behind me so I brought along a extra canoe paddle to steer with.  This work OK, but not great and it was pretty hard to get it to actually turn.  Of course with my jerry-rigged setup nothing is really where it should have been.  I was in the middle of the boat so my steering leverage was awkward and the mast was way forward without regard to any center of drag concepts.  The center of drag was probably shifting all over anyway since the wherry is pretty sensitive to who is sitting where and the 50 pound dog likes to sit either way in the bow or way in the stern depending on where he thinks he there is the most excitment. (When rowing, the dog is great, by the way.  He sits in the bow and I sit in the back rower seat  and we are pretty balanced and I don't have to reconfigure from two seats to one.) Anyway, back to sailing.  There was no conceivable way I was every going to get the thing to tack with my rough steering.  The manufacturer warns that tacking is difficult in the best of circumstances and mine were laughable.

Anyway, yes I can see it would be OK to use for long downwinds of a rowing trip.  No, I don't see it being useful for 'sailing' in any real sense of the word as configured by me on this attempt.

For amusement, I'd like to try mounting it closer to the middle of the boat and see if that helps with turning because, I imagine, the mast won't constantly be forcing it to turn off the wind.  But I will have to build a little stand for the mast that drops into the holes that already are there for the row wings somehow.  It looks pretty easy to do without modifying either the boat or the sail rig, but doesn't just naturally fit as is.

If I had a second sailing rig, I would also be amused to try one sail in the bow and one in the stern and see if I was coordinated enough to then use the sails to steer the whole thing by trimming the sails independently to generate a turning force.

   So it seems to me 1.6m^2 is very little sail for this boat (with trimaran floats), but it seems you were able to go along okay. I wonder if one of the rudders for CLC's other boats might be added to the wherry to improve your performance, or at least you could borrow their hardware. CLC also has its own kayak kit, and they would surely advise you on fitting it up, though it sounds like it maybe too late for that for you. Good luck, sounds fun!