WAVEWALK FISHING KAYAKS BLOG » catamaran

Sailing The W500 Kayak With Outriggers

W kayak — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:50:39 +0000

Our continuous cooperation with Jim Luckett, from SailBoatsToGo, has yielded new off-the-shelf kits for sailing the W500 kayak. The kits are lightweight, and include outriggers, a steering system, and everything you need to attach them to the W500 in a short time, without drilling holes in the kayak. They turn the W500 into an upwind, stable, swift, easy to use, versatile and portable sailing craft for 1-2 persons. The W500 under sail is a personal, mini sailing catamaran, or a sailing quadramaran, or a cartop high performance sailing boat.

You can carry the W500 kayak on top of any car, and the sailing kit would fit in your trunk.

As previously shown, it’s possible to sail the W500 kayak standing, and without outriggers, but this is not for everyone, obviously, so adding outriggers to such a large size sailing rig is a good idea, or else the kayak might be overpowered.

In addition, we’ve come up with a clamp mounted transom mount for an electric trolling motor, which turns the W500 into a compact, cartop, high performance motor sailing boat.

Kayak and Canoe

W kayak — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:58:01 +0000

Tagging the W as a canoe would be as technically correct as labeling it a kayak or a catamaran… It’s all of these and it’s neither, or shall we say that it’s basically a new watercraft with some canoe, kayak, and catamaran ‘genes’…

I’ve already written posts about canoing the W, and here are some new pictures:

The canoe paddle made from half a 9′ Mohawk double blade paddle outfitted with a T grip accessory is longer than most canoe paddles are, but it’s still a bit short for paddling standing in full comfort – if you’re tallish. We hope to be able to offer an extension for it soon.

And this is how you make a sharp turn – leftward in this case:

Leaning into the turn:

The left hull carries most of the W canoeist’s weight, and therefore it sinks deeper than the right hull, which carries little weight.

Being more submerged the left hull generates more drag than the right one, and thus it acts both as a rudder and a ‘pivot’ enabling sharp turns – that is relatively to this boat, which as a catamaran is a natural tracker. -The paddler paddles on the right side.