Lookfar makes a summer trip

 A 3 meter high tide at 4 pm, a moderate southwesterly breeze, two more days of a three week family holiday left, time to go yachting.

I set off straight down the harbour from our waterside home on port tack into a rising 15 knot breeze. Bright sunshine sparkling off a short sharp chop with spray flicking over the windward rail. I love this little sailboat!

We sailed into the narrows between towering tree covered headlands, the wind funneling through, threatening to knock us over, I enjoy these conditions, reading the traces the wind leaves on the water so you can react in time with the sheet or the helm, deflecting the excess power, surging forward over a brisk incoming current.

Ease sheet, reach for an apple, a swig of water, my cell phone, snap some pictures fore and aft, sheet home, surge forward again.

View from Lookfar back toward Rawene. Our home is at the far left of the houses spread over the low point in the distance.

View forward from Lookfar toward the harbour mouth.

With the wind still rising I decided to go ashore at an appealing spot where native trees spill down and blend  with mangroves on the shore line. Two black back gulls circle with threatening calls and gestures, this is their place not mine.
Large concretions, spherical boulders line the beach like forgotten, over sized cannon balls.

Top the mainsail and tie off Lookfar on a mangrove sapling.

Lookfar tied off to a mangrove sapling, sail braided up.

Lookfar and native bush backdrop.

I stretch out in the semi shade of a large puriri tree and take in the beauty of my surroundings. Snap a couple of pics of the canoe, finish a chocolate bar.

I promised Julie I would return at the top of the tide in time for her swim. Julie is responsible for these pictures of our return 2 hour later. Fantastic little outing!

Lookfar on a broad reach for home

Nearly there, spill some wind.

Ease myself out.

Time to pack up.

Lookfar's Easter cruise

Taking advantage of some fine warm and settled weather I've taken Lookfar for several more outings. On my hand line I've caught several nice snapper for our dinner and netted 3 stingray so far, within sight of our house. Julie and I released the two larger rays (the largest at close to 2 meters in width) and kept a smaller one that became hopelessly tangled by its tail in our net.

Today and yesterday I sailed out into the harbour on a very light breeze to have it fill in both days to a nice 15 - 20 knot sea breeze over the space of a couple of hours.

The tide is at its mid day highest at the moment with 3.7 meters being the peak on the full moon. Ideal for an extended trip, exploring the tidal river estuaries close to our home. This time my destination was the Omania river entrance. I trolled a lure on both occasions though so far no strikes. I'm targeting Kahawai, a pelagic fish, similar to salmon in general proportion. These fish are common in our waters, they pursue the yellow eye and grey mullet that team in our waters. I stopped on an uninhabited stretch of coast where an inviting and very ancient Puriri (A variety of Teak) tree hangs out over the water.

I ate an apple, drank some water and watched a cluster of snow white, royal spoon bills precariously perched in a mangrove thicket, waiting out the high tide for another wading forage through the mudflat margins of the upper harbour. Interestingly the tree has some of it's tangled and gnarled root system exposed on the bank at the waters edge. There is an enormous deposit of cockle and oyster shells among layered blackened remains of hundreds of cooking fires and hammer stones. Generations of people have been attracted to this place, this tree, as I have.

















Here we are returning home on a stiffening south westerly breeze running flat off the wind. I'm grateful to Julie who looks out for me and thinks about thinks like taking pictures.

I know that this image is somewhat like an earlier one, the difference now is that I have a very functional rudder which makes down wind control so much easier.

I'm finding that the canoe rides easier flat down wind with a lee board down as the narrow hull is prone to setting up a nasty oscillating roll in some sea states.

I'm finding the size and handiness of this little boat suits me and our location almost perfectly. Lookfar sails so well that I can't think of any way to improve it.

Comparing this little boat to others that I have owned, I find myself visualising previous trips in various other small sail boats, stretched out in the bottom, amidships, main sheet in one hand, tiller in the other, head and shoulders just protruding above the gunwale. Although this little boat has a miniscule rig compared to a Finn or an OK dinghy, the sensation of stealth and efficiency is no different. Lookfar is certainly very quick for its size, both upwind and down. I'm most mindful that I'm sailing in a tiny viking long ship.

Harmen.
Easter 2012

Lookfar's new rudder

I purchased a new rudder for my canoe project from our on line auction site.
It was listed as a brand new, unused, 30 year old, laser rudder, just what I wanted!

Pictures say it best:





















I had to modify the anodized aluminium cheeks by cutting away a section from the leading edge under the upper pintle to allow for clearance of the cast nose molding of the canoe.


















I cut 30mm off the Coleman, cast aluminium, nose molding to allow the closest possible fulcrum point to the stern of the canoe. I then drilled a perpendicular hole one oversize from the pintle pin. The hole drilled to one side is for the control line that keeps tension on the rudder blade in the down position. The line is secured by a cleat forward, close to my sitting position, on the gunwale.

















The lower Gudgeon is from a wrecked rudder off my old X Class yacht from the 1960's, from my "just in case it might come in handy one day" box. As you can see I bent the cheek plates around to the shape of the canoe stern. I bolted the assembly with 1/4" stainless steel machine screws, washers and nuts to the Ram X plastic hull. I shaped a pine block to fill the void created by the offset, female, gudgeon flukes. The black compound you see is a polyurethane "dubbin" adhesive used by the car industry to glue in car windshields, it's the toughest, meanest adhesive/sealant known to man.

















The lovely mahogany tiller is from an old P Class yacht which I kept from a restoration project on my son Robert's 3rd sail boat in the 1990's ( again from the same "handy" source). The tiller did not fit perfectly into the rudder head stock to begin with so some slight modification was needed for it to fit snugly.

















The tiller extension is from a window cleaners, telescopic extension handle.
I connected it to the tiller with a small stainless steel swivel, one end of which I bent out flat to create a saddle to bolt the assembly on to the underside of the tiller. This keeps the extension tube low, under the up sweeping curve of the tiller.
The cheek plate on the extension tube is cut from one side of a spinnaker pole fitting from a small sail boat, just the right diameter dish section to allow bolting to the side of the tube.

















The tiller is secured in place with a stainless steel locating pin drilled to fit through both the folded stainless steel cap of the tiller stock and the tiller itself. I always retain small items like these with a little lanyard so as not to loose them.

How does it handle you ask?

I launched Lookfar last night on the high tide. There was a 6 knot southerly, I sheeted in the tiny sail, dipped the starboard lee board, pulled on the rudder blade control line and the little canoe came alive, perfectly balanced, a delight to sail.
The rudder has transformed the handling of this little sailboat. Upwind no rudder is needed but downwind the hull wants to wander so the rudder helps to make the hull track straight. The new rudder makes a big difference to tacking and gibing control as well.
My old friend Mitchell says of my Lookfar project, "It's funny how the simplest, cheapest, smallest, closest to the water boats often provide the best boating." He should know, he showed me how!

Thanks for reading my blog.

Harmen

"Lookfar" A converted Coleman Ram X 15 Canoe

Today I launched my little sailing canoe.

I called my canoe "Lookfar" after the wizard Sparrowhawk's sail boat in Ursula LeGuinn's wonderful trilogy "A Wizard of Earth Sea"

I spent yesterday assembling my collection of bits and pieces and this is the result.

The Optimist sail and rig was retired from the learn to sail fleet here in Rawene when my son donated new sails last season.

Paul Bowker kindly gave me the old items. I took them home, washed the sail and set to with a needle and polyester thread to repair the loose seems and batten pockets.

I needed to run a cord into the luff tabling pockets as the brass rings had corroded away. The tack, clew and peak rings I reinforced with monofilament nylon line using a rolling blanket stitch.

I built a mast step cradle for the canoe from triangles of plywood glued to a base block of cedar. I drilled a hole through the block for the mast step and capped the base with an aluminium plate.

To fit the mast cradle into the canoe I removed the front seat, a molded plastic panel, to reveal the two tubular cross thwart frames.

I fitted the cradle in between the two tubes and rested the base block on the keelson.
I then replaced the seat panel and refitted it through its original fixing holes with long stainless screws securing both the seat and the mast cradle together into position. For extra strength I lashed the four corners of my new cradle to the thwart tubes and to the tubular keelson.

I chose a point behind the midship thwart on the keelson to attach the two parts of the main sheet.

For lee boards I modified the old ogive section blades that I kept from Toroa's earlier incarnation.

These were perfectly suited to being cut down and bolted through the gunwale with stainless steel threaded rod, nuts and washers. I pinched the bolts up tight which allowed for rotation of the pivot with enough friction to hold them in any position I
choose.

Here's the result.
















Prior to lee board attachment.




















Lawn sailing.
















Launch site is the little beach at the bottom of our property
















I wonder how it will sail?
















Lee board down, sheet in, Hmm not bad!
















Steering paddle is restrained midway down the shaft with a measured length of cord attached to the keelson tube behind my sitting position. I can toss the paddle from side to side and it just sits there waiting for me to grasp it.




































Ease sheet, very responsive.
















Into 6 knots of breeze from the North East
















Bye bye.
















Time to come back and reassure Julie.
















I look cool sailing along. Look ma no hands! Actually I can sail this thing without a rudder just shift my weight and or the lee board position forward or aft to alter course, butt steering still rules, Sweet.




















Still looking cool.
















Coming in to land.




















Easy peasy. Even the birds like it, I'm a bird magnet!

All photos by Julie Holton.

If you want a selection of solutions for your canoe conversion then here's a great web page on the subject.