Clif High - sailblade vid1
Aired: 2014-05-08
Duration: 06:01


=== Sailblade Prototype (04:57) ===

[00:00:05]  Okay boaters and boat nuts everywhere.
[00:00:10]  This is a quick look at a prototype of the sailblade for my kayak.
[00:00:19]  We're out here in Growdome.
[00:00:23]  I'm using my GoPro camera on this because my other one doesn't have a charge.
[00:00:29]  This dome is in too much shade to be used for gardening and it's going to be disassembled and relocated when we move here.
[00:00:37]  In the meantime, it's being used for the purpose of constructing our little structure here.
[00:00:44]  Most sails for kayaks are on the front of the beast.
[00:00:49]  That has a tendency to shift the center of effort and the center of lateral resistance forward.
[00:00:55]  It has a tendency to drive the bow down, especially in oncoming seas of any height at all.
[00:01:02]  So for a number of reasons, I went ahead and built a mizzen-based sail structure for this boat.
[00:01:10]  You'll notice that I don't quite have the same kind of profile along the bottom as most of the flat kayaks.
[00:01:16]  So I've shifted my skeg, which is usually beaching skeg because we don't have sand around here.
[00:01:22]  We have rock and other nasties.
[00:01:24]  Moved it back so that I've shifted my own center of effort directly into the area of my main paddle reach.
[00:01:36]  Then this mizzen-based sail structure here called a sail blade, for lack of a better term, is going to also pull my center of effort back.
[00:01:47]  Should raise my bow slightly, especially for beaching if I'm beaching under sail.
[00:01:52]  The structure folds up relatively easily.
[00:01:57]  It's all built on foam, folds up as you see.
[00:02:04]  It's a number of ropes to pull it to get it to activate.
[00:02:08]  It's behind the area of my swing, especially flat, but even extended.
[00:02:16]  I won't be bashing into it.
[00:02:17]  I have two control ropes, one on each side of the thing for swinging the foil.
[00:02:23]  You'll notice that the foil is atypical.
[00:02:26]  This is a crude model.
[00:02:29]  I did all of this, by the way, in about six hours.
[00:02:32]  The paint job is crap, but the foil is sealed with resin.
[00:02:36]  This is a form of a foil known as an Model 4 KF or Klein-Fogelman foil.
[00:02:46]  It's made out of spider foam that has 100 pounds lifting force and is reinforced longitudinally within the foam.
[00:02:56]  It was just sawed.
[00:02:57]  It has some 3-ounce fiberglass cloth on it and some quick cure phenolic resin to keep it all watertight.
[00:03:08]  It's mounted on a single shaft, which goes onto a solid bar.
[00:03:15]  This also is a piece of steel.
[00:03:17]  It should really be aluminum.
[00:03:19]  This is a lifting force and weight counteracting because it has foam in it, the same foam that we've got on inside here.
[00:03:31]  And this foil here is shaped to provide lifting force that direction, counteracting any sail force this way, plus provide lifting force against the weight of this structure.
[00:03:40]  This is probably a little bit heavier than it needs to be.
[00:03:42]  It's just a stick of wood.
[00:03:44]  It's used to cantilever the thing forward for storage and pull it up for activation and to stabilize it.
[00:03:52]  I'm not going to bother with the ropes and stuff at the moment.
[00:03:56]  We're going to intend to have a live demo of this probably tomorrow.
[00:04:00]  As you can see, once in place, you have a couple of control ropes to effectively use it like a sail.
[00:04:09]  It's very lightweight.
[00:04:10]  The control ropes run forward.
[00:04:12]  It doesn't obscure your view in any way.
[00:04:14]  So hopefully it'll be an improvement on a sail structure for kayaks.
[00:04:20]  And as I say, it's very lightweight.
[00:04:22]  And also since it's made out of foam and it's rigid, you can use it for a number of different purposes, even when it's lying down.
[00:04:28]  And if you ever go over and the thing, your kayak breaks up, there you go.
[00:04:32]  You can float on that bugger for a while.
[00:04:34]  So just a short little video to show you some of the boat crud we're doing.
[00:04:38]  Oh, there's that t-shirt.
[00:04:39]  Okay.
[00:04:40]  See you guys later.
[00:04:43]  It's early in the morning here.
[00:04:45]  Oh, by the way, the whole kayak here is all skin on frame.

=== 19 Foot Kayak Specifications (01:14) ===

[00:04:48]  It's a 16-ounce ballistic nylon that's been painted with hypalon paint.
[00:04:55]  This is the second painting in like 20 years.
[00:04:58]  The first coat was blue.
[00:05:00]  This is a white and black combo.
[00:05:02]  This all tied with synthetic sinew up till this year where I've switched over to this rob line, which is a form of Dinell Dux rope that is seriously strong.
[00:05:19]  I can't break this stuff at all ever.
[00:05:21]  A single strand will lift my weight in here.
[00:05:24]  And it's a real nice kayak, really good for racing because of its form.
[00:05:29]  No rudder or anything.
[00:05:30]  It has a rear skeg and then the forward skeg for tracking and control.
[00:05:34]  I think it's about 19, 20 feet long.
[00:05:38]  Any other specs you're interested in, I can provide.
[00:05:42]  This is fairly low light, so I don't want to go shoving the camera inside the boat or anything.
[00:05:47]  And as I say, Kayla and I are going to take it out tomorrow.
[00:05:51]  Hopefully we'll have the other camera charged up and we can do some longer range video of it on the water with the sail working.
[00:05:59]  Got to figure out what the tide is going to do to me.