Book Review: The $50, 5 Hour Canoe Sail Rig
by Daniel E. Fall

The $50, 5 Hour Canoe Sail Rig. William C. Mantis

I bought this book because I was curious about sailing, but only enough to invest a little bit in a sailing venture. When I thought about buying another hull to try sailing, I wasn’t as excited, especially since I’m a landlubber geographically, which makes me a hull lugger physically. Seeing this book, and comparing it to other commercially available sail rigs, I decided to read the book.

My canoe is pretty nice looking, but not perfect. Gilpatrick (canoe designer) is something of a hack, but he also provided the inspiration for building the canoe, and Mantis is not too much different, so after reading the book (94 pages), I decided to build the sail rig. Mantis admits he is a bit of a hack, and I figure a hack is a doer, not a perfectionist. Hacks I can follow, perfectionists never get anything done. If, on the other hand you don’t want to do things right, don’t bother at all. In order to make this sail rig look nice enough for a nice looking strip canoe, a few modifications were needed.

There were a couple of things I opted not to follow from the start. Mantis uses a tent fly for the sail rig, which I couldn’t find. I went to a fabric store, and found a mill end of rip stop nylon, which I then had sewn into a sail for me. Now this added quite a bit of time to the project (took a whole afternoon), but the sail looks nice enough to add to the top of a nice canoe, the total cost for the fabric and grommets was about $20.00. We actually followed the pattern in the book, and the only real issue is the sail got larger as it stretched on the yard. Mom warned me this would happen. We could have laid the material differently for less stretch, but I didnt mind. For the yard, I ended up buying a 16' piece of closet rod at Home Depot which cost about $20.00, and cut only about 2' off the end after applying the sail, so my yard is 2' longer by the stretch of the fabric. (make sure to apply the sail before cutting the yard to length!!!)

I went to Home Depot and searched and searched for fittings and stuff, and I was probably there for about two hours because I really wanted everything to look nice, so I spent more time debating with Mantis’ ideas, generally agreeing, but sometimes stepping up the quality of items to stainless or brass. I ended up buying a 16' closet rod for the yard, and only about 2' of it got cut off in the end, so my yard is a couple feet longer than the authors. I also couldn’t stand the notion of using EMT or plywood on a cedar strip canoe, so I substituted 3/4" oak dowels for the EMT, if they break, I’ll glass them, and then I’m sure they’ll be as strong, or stronger. I also built the leeboards from leftover strips, a very time consuming job, but well worth the appearance gains. I had to get some glass, and Dale Hedtke at The Boat House was (as always) helpful there, which is also where I bought the book. The fittings, glass, and book cost about $80.00

I also substituted 1/4" by 1" oak for the sprit boom. It bends with the sail nicer than the recommendation, and it has less propensity to tip over sideways as the authors. My leech does not flutter, even without the "uphaul" recommended by the author. The trick here is to make sure you have enough tension created from the batten back to the leech. I cheated and drilled a hole in the yard end of batten, which makes tension absolute, over time, this may change, I don’t know.

I also opted to use brass plated closet rod holders rather than plastic, mostly because I used a little Plastic Wood on my canoe, and hate it EXTREMELY much. Any plastic on a wood canoe is kind of an abomination, I think.

I have only played with the sail in the frontyard at home due to time constraints, it really catches the wind nicely. I’ll provide a performance review of the lateen sail at a later time.

All in all, this book is well worth the $10.00. It is far better than a movie, and I’ve had a blast putting the rig together. As far as $50.00, 5 hours, $120.00 is closer to truth, and 5 hours, well, maybe for an aluminum canoe, but for a nice strip canoe, make it more like 25 hours. I like the title, though, it has a much better ring than $120, 25 hour sail rig. As far as reading this book, it was about a 2 hour read, and I couldn’t put it down start to finish. Mantis does a nice job of mixing up history, design, and good instructions. There were a few points of confusion, and the layout of some of the diagrams is less than perfect, there is no total material list, nor tool list, but none of these are real necessities. The presentation is open minded, yet the directions are clear. On a simple scale of 1:10, this book rates right up there, and I’ll give Mantis a 8.5. I would recommend it to anyone who truly is considering putting a sail rig on a canoe, and I’ll be keeping it in my library, unlike a recent Managment Improvement text that fell victim to burning. If you have more money than time, however, I might recommend talking with Dale about a CLC sail rig. Happy paddling & sailing & why not fishing, too.

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