Some years ago while paddling on the Namekagon we took a short trip after paddling to visit the canoe museum in Spooner WI. Its a visit I’d recommend for anyone while in the area, and we repeated the museum visit on a later trip as well. Anyhow, one year when we visited they had on display a rotating collection of Rushton canoes. (They have one Rushton, the Sairy Gimp (sp?) on permanent display. Its a very small, light pac boat style canoe.) But what this thread brought to mind was one called the Vesper which is a purpose-built sailing canoe. I bet the varnish alone on that boat weighed as much as the Sairy Gimp. It had some very interesting features which others here might appreciate. I couldn’t find a full photo of the boat (the ones I took are on 3,5 floppys which I can’t read on my current machine), but here are two drawings:
and
That keel was made of lead sheets and folded like a Japanese fan.
Quite the canoe.
True. My own sweet spot in a monohull(sans outriggers) is a moderate breeze. Top of the range , most comfortably being about 15mph.(As for some strange reason, I feel preferably more comfortable doing a ledgey Class IV as a paddler, than I do “hiking out” as a rock garden-free sailor.)
–And mountain winds are indeed the most suddenly changeable of all.
I had a Columbia 23 on Lake Tahoe for many years and sailed with my uncle a lot in the San Juan Islands of WA on a Corando 35. Keeled boats are pretty sturdy. Sailing a canoe seems so tender and fragile in comparison.
Hats off to canoe sailors, there are not many left.
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