Sunday, October 4, 2015

Smug Doug Productions “Storm Action” Sail System

In the Antipodean autumn of 2013, after a chance encounter on coral-fringed Kent Island off the north Queensland coast, we hooked up with a fantastic group of sea kayakers in Cairns. They foolishly invited us, virtually sight unseen, to join them on their upcoming epic paddle from Cooktown to Lizard Island.

The trade winds on the north Queensland coast blow pretty reliably, and at times quite strongly, from the southeast. Most paddlers use this to their advantage by doing one-way trips from south to north with sails mounted to the front decks of their yaks.
Sailing to Rattlesnake Island
Taking the old saw “when in Rome ...” to heart, Sandy and I borrowed Pacific Action sails for the trip to Lizard. The very far north Queensland coast is famous for its strong winds, and seeing as our trip had lots of big crossings, we were lucky to have light to moderate winds all the way from Cooktown to the tranquility of the Lizard Island lagoon. We had minimal problems managing the sails in the modest winds, and even managed to the keep our boats slippery side down the whole way.

Having crossed to the Dark Side, there was no turning back – much to our surprise, any delusions about reverting to "pure" paddlers quickly fell by the wayside, as we had to admit kayak sailing could be an awful lot of fun, and added a whole new dimension to the sport. But the fun really starts when the winds push north of 20 knots. We have pretty tippy boats (Prijon Marlins) and being sea kayaks, they are without keel or even dagger-board. The heeling force generated by even a 1 square metre sail can be hard to handle, especially with a lightly loaded boat in heavy seas. And even more for a couple of aged mountaineers recently transplanted from The Frozen North. We have sailed in winds gusting over 30 knots, but it is pretty much hang on for dear life, and once the sail is up, I've got Buckley's of getting it back down without capsizing. At that point, it is clearly a bit too much of a good thing.
Sailing to Lizard. PC:SM
Our sails, made by Pacific Action in Sydney, Australia, are a well made two-masted sail designed specifically for kayaks. The two-masted design works well, allows sailing a moderate amount into the wind, and means you don't have to worry about the boom swinging back and forth clocking you on the side of the head.

I have, however, found there to be a couple weak points in the Pacific Action design:

  1. The shape of the sail puts the widest part of the sail on top, which maximizes the heeling force for a given wind speed.
  2. I find the sail very difficult to pull down in high winds/heavy seas. In hairy conditions I can't let go of the paddle with both hands, and pulling the sail down with one hand is almost impossible. If you do manage to start pulling the sail down, the first thing that typically happens is the sail catches the wind in a more beam wind orientation, thus dramatically increasing the heeling force – and it is time for a cooling dip in the drink.
  3. The sail can not be reefed, so depending on conditions, becomes generally too much to comfortably handle above 15-20 knots, depending on boat and sea conditions.

I like fiddling with my gear and making it better, so I took this as a challenge. I made a couple of key modifications to our sails.

Dedicated sail pull-down line.

I have run an extra line from one mast's mid-point D-shackle through a carabiner clipped to the other mast's D-shackle (acts like a pulley), and then through a cam cleat mounted on the kayak deck just in front of the cockpit. This line is used exclusively to pull the sail down.
Anchor point of pull-down line.
Carabiner "pulley".
Full pull-down including cam cleat.
This pull-down has a few advantages:

  1. When I pull on the line, the first thing that happens is the two masts get pulled together, taking the wind out of the sail. Long before I've got the sail down, most of the heeling force is gone.
  2. As this line doesn't go through an intermediate clip like the trimming line, I have better leverage to pull the sail down quickly.
  3. As this pull-down line runs through the cam cleat, I can easily pull the sail down one-handed. I generally get the sail completely down in 2 to 3 good pulls, and if I need to throw in a brace part way, no problem, I can let go of the pull-down cord and the sail stays partially stowed and mostly not catching the wind.
  4. Once the sail is fully pulled down, the pull-down cord through the cam cleat keeps the sail more-or-less stowed on the deck so if things are really hairy, I can focus on staying upright and wait until I've stopped wetting myself before properly stowing the sail.

A reefable sail

Modification #1 notwithstanding, I find a 1 m2 sail too large to comfortably handle with a beam wind > 15 knots; with > 20-25 knots from any direction, or a confused sea, the odds of a capsize start to become uncomfortably high.

With a key suggestion from a shady character in the paddling world, who goes only by the moniker "Kev Kayaker", I came up with a design to allow the sail to be reefed. It is effectively three sails for the price of one.

The stock “1 square metre” sail is 129cm tall, 22cm wide at the bottom, and 126cm wide at the top; by my calculations it is about 0.95 m2. It slides onto the two masts with sleeves on each side of the sail.

The Smug Doug “reefable” 3-piece sail system is comprised of three separate sails that “stack” onto the masts. The storm sail is 70cm tall which makes it about 0.35 cm2. The sail has full-height (129 cm) sleeves on each side so it slides onto the masts the usual way but the main area of the sail is at the bottom. The sail is secured to the bottom of the masts by a bungee, just like the stock sail.

Storm sail (clear).
The next size up is a sail section 38cm tall which slides onto the masts and “stacks” on top of the storm sail. A horizontal strip of Velcro along the top of the storm sail matches a strip on the bottom of the middle sail that secures the middle sail to the bottom sail. This makes for a sail of about 0.7 m2.
Middle sail.
Middle sail installed.
Finally, the third sail stacks on top of the middle sail in a similar manner to bring the sail area back up the stock 0.95 m2.
Full sail.
After completing the design, I simply handed the drawings off to Sandy and said “Make it so”. With some assistance from Gary at Pacific Action and Mick at Flat Earth Sails, and a few prototypes that gallantly made the ultimate sacrifice, my seamstress skillfully produced some reefable sails.

We have been very happy with the performance of our reefable sails, and haven't used the stock sails since trying out our new ones. Once the wind is 20 knots or better, we find it is considerably less effort to sail with the 0.7 sail (less bracing, easier to keep on track), and we go just as fast (straighter, more efficient track and/or approaching hull speed). The sail area is reduced by about 26%, but it feels like the heeling force is reduced by at least double that – presumably because the sail area is lower, making for less leverage.

If the wind picks up some more, or if the seas are large or messy, we drop down to the 0.3 sail which still works amazingly well in strong winds. The sail area is reduced by about 63%, but again the heeling force is reduced by much, much more than that.


The only drawback to the reefable system is that it does not sail into the wind quite as well as the stock sail. The Velcro joins are much stiffer than the sail fabric, so the sail doesn't fill out to the optimal airfoil shape as well. Also, the smaller the sail, the narrower it is, and the storm sail is too narrow to properly fill out the ideal shape, so again, less optimal sail shape results. But in practice, by the time we're down to the storm sail, we wouldn't have any sail at all if were using the stock 1 m2 sail, so it seems like a pretty fair trade-off.

Overall, these two mods have made a huge difference in our enjoyment of these sails.

I'd like to thank Gary Housley at Pacific Action sail systems who provided a factory “second” sail for our project, and Mick MacRobb at Flat earth kayak sails who sold us some quality sail making materials at a very reasonable price.

2 comments:

  1. Have a look at SeaDog sails. They are sold with optional reefing points reducing the sail area from 0.8m to around 0.6m. One sail to cover all conditions. Check out the limited edition on http://seadogsails.blogspot.com.au/

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  2. Nice looking sails. I am amazed there are at least three commercial kayak sails made in Australia. The Pacific Action are good for our plastic boats with the big mounting feet - I think the single mast designs can be problematic with plastic hulls.

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