Rig for a 19' sailing canoe

[SaugatuckWB]

I'm picking up an old wooden sailing canoe tomorrow and wondering if anyone knows what type of rig something like this may have carried way back when. I haven't actually seen the boat yet, but its a 2 hour drive and its free so I'm just going to get it regardless of the condition. It doesn't have a mast or sail and the current owner doesn't have much info about the boat. It came from Higgins Lake in northern lower-Michigan.

 

[alan white]

It's likely you could use a Sunfish rig, which is a lateen and is as simple as they get.

 

[SaugatuckWB]

I thought of that. I was just wondering what may have been a more traditional or original type of rig. I've seen them with yawl rigs.

 

[SaugatuckWB]

But there isn't any evidence from the pictures of a mizzen and the tiller as it is would eliminate that option.

 

[alan white]

Again, lateen. You can fashion your own spars. Then the sail is dirt simple. The idea is to keep everything low as you can and probably about 40 sq ft or so of area.
Nice looking boat, by the way. Not easy to repair due to the decking...
She'll be tippy with those slack bilges.

 

[gggGuest]

Well, that's an *extremely* interesting one. She looks as if she might be a proper decked racing Canoe to these eyes, and they haven't had Lateen rigs and stuff since the 19thC. I think she deserves something better than a crummy Sunfish rig. AIUI in the US decked canoes tended to condense around the 16*30 rule, which mandated two masts, but clearly a 19ft boat can't be a 16*30, especially as there's no sign of sliding seat gear. The mast seems too far aft for a typical two masted Canoe, but it might be very interesting what you find if you poke a digital camera or mobile phone around under those decks and see if/what other frames, maybe even mast supports are under there.

Have a good look through the decked Canoe archive here http://www.intcanoe.org/iclife/history.html and see what you can find, but it seems to me that one might be a bit special. Any idea how old she is? Have a good look for builders plates and the like. There are still enthusiasts for the old style decked Canoes around in the US, although I'm not in contact with any, be well worth touching base with someone who knows there stuff about the history...

 

[Doug Lord]

I'm picking up an old wooden sailing canoe tomorrow and wondering if anyone knows what type of rig something like this may have carried way back when. I haven't actually seen the boat yet, but its a 2 hour drive and its free so I'm just going to get it regardless of the condition. It doesn't have a mast or sail and the current owner doesn't have much info about the boat. It came from Higgins Lake in northern lower-Michigan.

===============
Send a PM to Steve Clark , a member here, and I'm sure he could help or at least point you in the right direction.

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/profile/steve-clark.html

 

[SaugatuckWB]

I don't know the age. The owner found it under a porch of a cottage he was working on ~10 years ago. He talked with some people from the area and they remember seeing it sailing on the lake about 50 years ago, but that's all. He said he can't find any builder's plate or any identifying info on the boat itself.

I'll look at the websites.

 

[SaugatuckWB]

Here are a couple more pics. All the pictures/drawings I see online are either two masts or sloop rigs, and a then a couple with a sprit.

 

[gggGuest]

That's very unusual... Contact some of the museums in your country I think. 50 years ago is about as young as I'd expect, could be a lot more.

 

[Steve Clark]

It actually looks more like a Suicide than anything else.
In which case it had a 125 square foot main and jib rig. Possibly with a wish boom.
Too big to ever have been an IC and not one of the other classes that were based on wood canvas open canoes.
Or it was a one off boat built by someone for his or her own reasons. These things happen, or at least used to.
SHC

 

[Skyak]

Here are a couple more pics. All the pictures/drawings I see online are either two masts or sloop rigs, and a then a couple with a sprit.

The dagger board is wrong (too small). The front deck might be a modern replacement to move the mast and based on placement it looks like it was cat or sloop rigged last. I don't see any stay points. It looks like it was designed to be fast (100+ sf) originally. A lug or junk rig would get you going soonest.

 

[SaugatuckWB]

Thanks for the Suicide idea. It doe seem to fit in some ways but the suicide in the pics has a small transom. The deck does look like a replacement, terrible patch job. And I agree on the dagger board. In any case, I'll be picking the boat up tomorrow evening and will post some new info after I get it back to my shop and can look it over.

 

[Steve Clark]

Dollars to Doughnuts that's Sunfish daggerboard. I recognize it from here.
Nothing in the Suicide rules mandated a transom, it was an experimental design class so someone who wanted a canoe stern could have built one. I make the judgement more on the length,freeboard,beam, cockpit size and a general sense of the scantlings which all seem Suicide like. Of course it can also be a boat a guy thought up and built or had built.
Or something someone found and modified according to personal prejudice for his or her own amusement. The deck definitely doesn't look like the hull, so either it was a replacement or it was part of the "original modification."
In any event, it looks like a potentially cool boat, I hope there is enough left of it to make repair and use an attractive possibility.
SHC

 

[SaugatuckWB]

I only had the one photo of a Suicide to compare with. So it could still be that. The dagger board does look like a Sunfish or even one of those cheap boats that were styrofoam covered with hard plastic. I had one as a kid. A Snark.