Outrigger Canoe Sailing in New Zealand spring 2004
Trip Log, Photos, and Digressions
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Another view of the proa.

Harmen with toy sailing canoe like he used to make as a kid. The feathers are stuck into a stalk of native flax.


We stopped at a used marine supply store. Nifty twisted grapnel anchors on a longline rig.


Harmen  made this nifty zoetrope of a proa, showing the shunting procedure.
A proa is an outrigger canoe which backs up (shunting) instead of zigzagging (tacking).
That means the sail is always lifting the outrigger and there are all sorts of theoretical advantages.
This system is used in Micronesia, Fiji, Tonga, parts of Papua, and by eccentrics the world over.


He and Michael Toy built this proa. Harmen is allergic to epoxy and some other chemicals from his career as a commercial artist making gigantic sculptures.
So they used old style marine adhesives rather than epoxy when they built this boat. More details are on Gary Dierking's site at:
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/garyd/toroa.html


It has lots of interesting features. The spars are hollow and triangular, The boat steers with fore-and-aft dagger-skegs with an ogive section. These foils are raised and lowered to steer the boat. The outrigger attachment is an east-aftrican style adopted by the Marquesans. The tack of the yard slides along the gunwale pulled by a loop of rope that goes bow-to-bow.
It seats into a hook at the end of the gunwale so a singlehander can do a shunt without standing up. The sail is cut with threadline bias relative to all three edges.
In other words, the woven threads of the sail are not parallel to any edge of the sail.
That has interesting effects on how the shape develops with increasing wind pressure. The seams in traditional sails were usually parallel to the leech, but because the mats were twined rather than woven the weave was at 45 degrees to the leech, just like this sail.

 

I sailed up the coast to Torbay to visit Michael Toy, who built this canoe with Harmen.

 
Junior racing league in Optimist dinghies at Torbay. They start young here.
Someday they'll crew on America's Cup boats and sail their yachts around the world.


Young kayakers. Learning the skills to enjoy the country's fjords and coastline.

Besides the proa Michael Toy has built a number of other boats. Had a very interesting time talking with him and apparently took no photos. We ate sandwiches and drank rainwater he catches from his roof. It tastes like snow. He likes "hullform" software from Blue Peter Marine.


"Lest we Forget". I found this war memorial very moving. NZ lost a lot of boys fighting Britain's wars.

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