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By Hugh Horton - Detroit, Michigan - USA

A 21st Century, Solo Cruising Sailing Canoe

19th century sailing canoes, in W. P. Stephens’s prints, caught me in the 1980s. The boats’ ideas and their elegance have held me since. They’d promised fine travel a century ago, and they’d given it. They had a nearly infallible auxiliary, were handily portable by train or muscle powered cart, and they were fast. But their usage and evolution slumped after bicycles and better roads were built, and fossil fuel came to small boats.

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‘97 1) Puffin on oyster shell Corrigan Reef, Cedar Key, Florida, with her first rig, a battenless gunter.

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‘99 2) Serendipity with Meade Gougeon and her first rig on the Saginaw River, Michigan.

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I studied photos and drawings, and reread their stories. At Mystic Seaport and the Adirondack Museum, their graceful shapes, and clear-eyed sincerity seduced me.

John Dowd’s, Sea Kayaking: a Manual for Long Distance Touring, 1983, told me about folding Kleppers and their extraordinary accomplishments. They were often fitted with a sailing rig, placing them, to me, in the same genre of boats---sailing and paddling about equally well---although Kleppers are built skin-on-folding-frame.

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‘01 3) Serendipity full reef back to Spragge, Ontario, Canada.

‘02 4) Puffin with batwing gunter, Serendipity, and Spirit with Jan Gougeon, North Channel of Lake Huron, Ontario, full reefs.

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My mind’s eye saw gliding in the mist a sensual curve, a bit of sheer---a modern decked, cruising sailing canoe.

In ‘86, beginning with a twenty foot Eddyline San Juan three-holer, I invested in producing sailing kits for kayaks and canoes. I fitted rigs to solo boats, and to smaller and larger doubles and tandems, including Valerie Fons’s and Verlen Kruger’s decked canoes. I tried many small boat rigs, from the simplest to high aspect fully battened sails. I kept testing and experimenting.

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‘02 5) Serendipity bare poles back to our takeout at Spanish, Ontario. Ron Sell made our paddles.

‘03 6) Serendipity sisters, Saginaw River, first reefs.

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In ‘93 I sketched a multi-chine hull, borrowing some of the shape from Russell Brown’s Brown Pelican kayak.

In ‘95 Ron Sell decked a Bell Canoe Works “Starfire” hull for me, after we’d marked and cut a new sheer below the paddlers’ pinched sheer. Dave Yost had drawn the 15’ x 34” Starfire for formal freestyle competition, paddled as a tandem with single blades. The displacement and most of the Starfire’s characteristics, particularly her deep rocker and relatively full ends, work well for sailing cruising. After I rigged her with a leeboard, rudder, spars, sail, and seat, she became Puffin.

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‘03 7) Walela with Kayann paddling single blade at Cedar Key, first reef.

‘03 8) Walela with Kayann at Cedar Key.

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In ‘98 Meade Gougeon saw Puffin sailing and wanted to buy her. Based on another carbon and Kevlar Starfire hull, I built Serendipity for him and he built her a new rig.

Then came six sisterships with the Gougeons’ help. But instead of wood composite decks these were vacuum bagged, carbon skinned and foam cored, except Howard Rice’s Sylph which has a wooden deck like Serendipity’s. Jan Gougeon added to his Spirit the best notion I’ve seen for leeboard control, which I copied for my wife Kayann’s, Walela.

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‘04 9) Meade’s Serendipity Sister, Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge, Michigan, with the fattest fathead.

‘05 10) Puffin with Jan, and Serendipity, inside Atsena Otie Key, Cedar Key.

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Meade’s style rig moves all the Serendipity sisters except Howard’s. Puffin first had a battenless gunter, the successor of which I built for Meade’s Serendipity. Stu Hopkins suggested a true batwing gunter for Puffin. Bill Ling’s gunter, shown on Bufflehead, is the successor to Puffin’s batwinged gunter, and the prototype for Bufflehead gunters.

Yost’s Starfire hull was my gauge and baseline for developing the 15’ 5” x 33” Bufflehead design for plywood. After twenty years of experiments and experience sailing canoes and kayaks, with help and encouragement from many remarkable people, Bufflehead is the result of the multichine shape I drew in 1993.

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‘05 11) Sylph reefed, Howard Rice, Lake Michigan.

‘06 12) Sylph and Howard with his main and jib on Brevort Lake, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

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The goal is to improve the cruising sailing canoe, not duplicate or reinvent it. Bufflehead’s intended use, however, is the same as the 19th century sailing cruisers---pleasurable travel after the adage, ‘Sail when you can; paddle when you must!’

~Hugh Horton - hortonsailcanoe@wowway.com~

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‘06 13) Sylph with Howard’s tent on Brevort lake.

‘07 14) Walela in Everglades National Park; first trial of the maximum storm reef. Wasn’t nearly windy enough for it, but seemed to work okay. Jan Gougeon photo.

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‘07 15) Bufflehead on Lower Saranac Lake, New York, full reef on her first sail. Bill Ling Photo

‘07 16) Bufflehead on Lower Saranac Lake, her single reef tied the first time too loosely. Bob Treat photo.

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‘07 17) Bufflehead sailed by Jan at the Killbear Canoe Rendezvous, Parry Sound, Lake Huron, Ontario, shot from his Spirit.

‘07 18) Bufflehead full sail at Killbear. Skip Izon built this Bufflehead’s hull and deck halves. Scott Hughes photo.

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click to enlarge ‘07 19) Bufflehead, a cedar and canvas open canoe, Walela, and Spirit, on a Killbear beach. Cartop weights are less than forty pounds for the carbon decked Starfires, low forties for the other Starfires. This Bufflehead’s cartop weight, with a heavy, oyster resistant, ‘expedition’ bottom for Cedar Key is fifty eight pounds. The traditional and high quality 1940s Peterborough Champlain is about ten pounds more.

Rig notes:
Three rig styles: Meade’s full batten, half wishbone, fat and fatter heads; Howard’s sloop or cat rig, short leech battens, conventional boom and vang; and my gunters, battenless or a full batwing, half wishbone or sprit boom. Stu Hopkins of Dabbler Sails made Puffin’s first gunter, and all the red sails; Howard sewed his sails.

For more on these sailing canoes, read:
Epoxyworks Number 16, Fall 2000


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