That's impressive I'll have to check out that sail rig.

Impressive Kayak Sailing!! I am a kayaker, but I have never sailed in my life. I recently got a gorgeous Kevlar-made 11 years old Easy Rider Dolphin 15ft w/ rudder and I am contemplating to convert it into a sealing kayak since these Easy Rider kayaks are already made with rig for easy adaptation to a sailing boat. When on open water, is it possible to take down the sail while siting in the kayak if one wishes so? How stable a sailing kayak would be without a catamaran stabilizers? Dan from Seattle

Of course, this discussion comes up, and we have come up with a canned answer to help people understand what a kayak sail can do. Here is a detailed reply we sometimes send out to people when they ask questions about how well they can sail up wind with a Falcon Sail. ===================================== Your question about using a lateral resistance enhancer (lee board / dagger boards / large skegs) and if they are necessary to sail with a Falcon Sail is a common question, so we have made a canned answer to help people. The short answer is a stock kayak hull does great and lateral resistance enhancers are not necessary. They will get in the way and create complexities and issues at times. Very well-made lee boards can help with some angles of attack but are not helpful in most situations and will get in the way on every outing. They add bulk, drag, weight, complexity, cost, potential failures ect ect. Kayaks sail amazingly well without any lateral resistance enhancer. Near zero falcon sailors use lee boards or other lateral resistance enhancers. There is a longer more detailed answer below. The owner of Falcon Sails wrote an this in a article. I grew up sailing keel boats, sun fishes, trailer sailors, Hobie cats and anything else I could get my hands on. As a conventional sailboat person, I use to think only a boat with a lateral resistance enhancer (lee board / center board / dagger board / keel) will sail properly. We have learned there is a lot more to kayak sailing, than conventional sail thinking will tell you. Conventional sailboat thinking is very helpful at times but does yield a few misleading assumptions about kayak sailing. As far as needing a lateral resistance enhancer goes, you must consider a few things before making any assumptions. Look at a Hobie 16 and some other purpose-built sail boats. Even as a purpose-built sailboat, the Hobie 16 has no resistance enhancer because its hulls have a lot of natural lateral resistance built right in from the start. They have no lee boards, dagger boards, center boards, or keels. Similar to the Hobie 16 Catamaran Sailboat (not a Hobie kayak), kayaks have a lot of natural lateral resistance built into their hulls also and sail surprisingly well without any lateral resistance enhancer. Kayaks are not sail boats, will not point as well as a complex sailboat, but their hulls are efficient at sailing and can make surprisingly good up wind progress. Think about this. Sailboat hulls are designed to be as slippery as possible going forward. A byproduct of a sailboat hull being designed to be as slippery as possible going forward, is a hull that is slippery going sideways (and slippery in all directions actually) and also tends to spin. Modern Sailboat hulls, make conventional sail thinkers believe you must have a lateral resistance enhancer on a kayak. Kayak hulls are designed to track and go in a straight line. This is achieved by having lateral resistance built in throughout the length of the hull, which is what makes them sail surprisingly well without lateral resistance enhancers. To demonstrate how a kayak has a lot more resistance going sideways than forward, imagine pushing a kayak that has an adult sitting in it in the forward direction. Most kayaks will easily glide 30 feet or more. Now imagine pushing that same kayak with an adult in it, in the sideways direction. Due to its lateral resistance, it will probably go about 1 or 2 feet after you are done pushing it. Or think about towing a kayak with a person in it, from the side vs towing a loaded kayak from the bow. The kayak towed from the side will be much much slower due to its lateral resistance. In both examples you are testing and seeing, a kayaks lateral resistance is significant. Once a kayaks hull is moving through the water, its lateral resistance increases by quite a bit. All this said, with a smart sized sail / one that is not too big, a kayak has plenty of lateral resistance without adding anything to it. Once you build up some speed, a kayaks lateral resistance increases dramatically. Kayaks do not sail as well as a purpose-built sailboat, but you can do no paddle sailing and reach across the wind, and even make some upwind progress. Of course, a purpose-built sailboat will sail better, than a kayak will, but kayaks sail amazingly well. If you have an efficient sail, you do not need a lee board, or center board, or dagger board, or any lateral resistance enhancer to have a great kayak sailing experience. Falcon Sails focuses on keeping things as simple, efficient, compact, reliable, and light weight with the best possible performance. All this can be had for less than 3.5 pounds, in a sail that can be dropped in seconds and folded down to the size of an umbrella in just a few more seconds. Lee boards and dagger boards add weight, complication, bulk, expense, drag ect. Some people want to turn their kayaks into a sailboat. That is fine, but you will add weight, complication, bulk, expense, drag, set up time at the put in, tear down time at the take out, more rigging, more stuff to store, and if there is no wind, or too much wind, you are better off with a compact sail rig that gives you 70% or more of the sailing benefits in a package that weighs just over 3 pounds that can be lowered and compactly secured to the deck of your kayak in seconds. Everybody has their thing. If you want to have that perfect ideal incredible sailing experience in one situation, you will lose a lot in other situations. There is not a rig that will cover all situations perfectly. If you want simplicity and versatility, you will be happiest with a simplistic high-quality sail and rig for your kayak. As a lifelong sailor, I thought the same thing sailors typically think about lateral resistance appendages. I have sailed and owned a lot of different boats. I use to race and skipper and crew on a lot of different boats, and can say I am a decent sailor. My conventional sail thinking made me believe you need a lee board or something on a kayak to sail. Then I tried kayak sailing. The performance of a sail on a kayak amazed me. I was hooked instantly. I was surprised. That was even before there were good quality sail rigs available. Now that I can have a good quality sail rig, and a good airfoil shape, I will not go kayaking without a sail. After kayak sailing for the last 12 years and having paddle sailed thousands of miles, I have never used a lee board or anything like it. None of my friends use lee boards and none of us feel like we are missing anything. If you keep a good sail trimmed properly, oriented to the wind properly, and have at least 1.5 mph of hull speed, you can reach across the wind, and even make upwind progress of about 10 to 20 degrees above reaching. That is without paddling or a lee board or a dagger board on a standard stock kayak hull. In general terms if you have good conditions, a good sail, and you use decent sail trim, you can easily sail 180 degrees and even up to 220 degrees without paddling and without the bother of any lateral resistance enhancers. If you paddle to keep your speed up and the sail oriented properly to the wind, a good sail, will generate useful propulsion all the way up to within 30 degrees of straight upwind. That is without or without a lateral resistance enhancer. In general, once your actual track is 10 degrees above reaching, you have to start paddling to keep things oriented properly. Initially a few small paddle strokes here and there will add a lot to your possible angles of attack. The more aggressively upwind your angle of attack is, the more you have to paddle. But still, you can gain useful propulsion to with 30 degrees of straight upwind. For example you can paddle with a 2mph effort and go 3.5mph. You can speed up faster, slow down slower, and have a higher top speed. And have a lot more fun while you are at it. With a little bit of planning, you can paddle upwind a little bit and reach back and forth all day long and not have to paddle much at all. Once your movement is 10 degrees above reaching, you cannot just sit there doing nothing, but you can avoid paddling and reach across the wind all day long, and even make upwind progress without paddling and no lateral resistance appendage or enhancers. With a good sail, kayaks sail very nicely.

What was the wind speed during this sail? Do you offer recommendations for maximum wind speeds for using the various sail sizes you offer? Is it possible to use your paddle as lateral resistance to improve upwind performance?

Just like when sailing a purpose-built sailboat, when kayak sailing to maximize your potential, you will have to think about what you are doing. When conditions are good, you can get useful propulsion to within 30 degrees of straight upwind. Anybody who does a lot of kayaks sailing with a good quality rig will agree. If it is really windy, gusty, shifty, there are large waves, you are not thinking, you have too big of a sail, the paddle sailor is inexperienced, ect, the 30-degree number is going to grow. With a good sail and some practice you can have the same results. I wrote a bit more about this here. www.falconsails.com/KayakSailingFAQ.php#centerboard If you contact me at Falcon Sails, I can send to you a rough draft set of instructions for kayak sailing upwind. www.falconsails.com/contact.php This video shows a clip of a upwind leg I was enjoying last paddle season. It is a lot of fun. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rtCqn8dnssDMc30.html I was in a 14 foot long Jackson Journey kayak and making some upwind progress without paddling. I could have made more upwind progress if I paddled, but I can sail with no paddle 200 out of 360 degrees. This kayak has a rounded hull so most kayaks will do a little better yet. This video shows me sailing and tacking upwind with no lee board or dagger board and almost zero paddling. Here are 2 videos of me enjoying my kayak and sailing up wind with very little paddling. facebook.com/falconsails/videos/1594936704274061 & facebook.com/falconsails/posts/4106133799451973 Both includes some really neat gps telemetry that makes it easy to see my actual movement. It shows me sailing 200 out of 360 possible degrees. This kayak has a rounded hull which makes it a average performer. If your kayak has a contoured hull, it will sail better / about 10 more degrees on both the port and starboard side. If I started paddling and kept the sail oriented to the wind properly and kept some motion to help my stock hull generate more lateral resistance, I could have had useful propulsion to within 30 degrees of straight upwind. This is very similar to motor sailing a sailboat. The motor alone can push the sailboat, but using the sail it will speed up faster, have a higher top end speed, will slow down slower, and require less effort to get to your destination. Here is another video of some friends and I enjoying a nice 18-mile paddle sail where we sail about 70% of the day. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iNGShradvqu9nGQ.html If you plan your day well, use good techniques, take advantage of reaching, and not dive downwind you can sail all day long with out without lee boards. Here are some pictures of a typical kayak sailing day, that include a track log of what we sailed and what we did not sail. I had several beginner kayak sailors with me, so I avoided some of the more difficult tacks and we still sailed about 75% of our miles. www.flickr.com/.../falco.../albums/72157712563766083 With some planning you can sail most of your miles, and if you just go and not plan anything, you can still sail over 50% of your miles. If you want to sail paddle sail in good conditions, it is easy to sail more than half your miles even if you do not plan anything and just randomly pick lines.

You can see the full track for this day on this google map page. www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=11xLQdxX7cqVdMPG-rY_iDMulF89qff4&usp=sharing It is the blue line. We paddle sailed 9 miles across the wind to another island, and 9 miles back for a total of 18 miles with near zero paddling the entire way. Here is another post with a short video from that same paddle when we were just cruising back to our starting point. facebook.com/falconsails/videos/1098657067523085/ This one shows just how nice it is to be able to sail. Here is the detailed text I wrote with the track log. Statistics computed from imported data. We kayak sailed 98% of the distance using our Falcon Sails with no lateral resistance enhancers. That means we used our stock kayak hulls with no lee boards, dagger boards, or anything else. We had a standard basic kayak hull with no changes. We sailed out and back. See www.falconsails.com We sailed all of these 18 miles out and back. We reached with a slightly aggressive tack in both directions. It was perfect. The wind was pretty much straight out of the south east east and rotated a few more degrees east to make the return trip super easy. Sunday, September 11, 2022 11:09 AM EDT Distance: 18.3 miles Duration: 6 hours, 19 minutes, and 3 seconds Average Moving Speed 5.1 mph.

Does anyone know of any kits? I have a sit on top and this would be great when I am going up wind.

wuaaaawwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What do you do if you flip over?