Canoe Sailing Lake Springfield

Saturday, I finally had a chance to head down to Lake Springfield for a few hours to test out the skin-on-frame canoe's outrigger that I recently fashioned from a 2x4, some off-cut bits of wood and a couple of old spars I shortened and reshaped into iakos/crossbeams. It added a lot of stability to the canoe. At just shy of 12 feet long and maybe 32-33 inches wide, it's never going to be a speedy sailing craft, but with 45 square feet of sail up, it was a little too white knuckled without the reaction time an outrigger gives you. I can even paddle on my knees, which is how I dumped the boat last summer, within the first five minutes of hitting the lake.

One thing I really like about the new setup, I can now easily drop the sail, spread it over the iakos and paddle in dead stretches of wind and under bridges or trees. I'd never tried to sail a thin river channel lake like this and it was more fun than I was anticipating. It took an otherwise plain stretch of water and made it into something more adventurously navigated.