Most "honest" sailors (is that an oxymoron?) will admit to having flirted with a one-design class. With the combined appeals of match and fleet racing, of innovation and “interpretation” of the rules, of cutting-edge technology and long-steeped traditions, one-design racing enriches sailing on a completely different plane than just pottering about the harbor in any old boat. That dream of building a one-design and then campaigning her is merely a rich fantasyland for most of us, and fulfilled for very few.The boat presented here is intended to offer this possibility to the rest of us. She is a high-tech, cutting-edge, extreme racing machine with a serious nod to history and tradition, buildable by amateurs, affordable, and transportable, with the potential for class events and the promise of fun whether sailing alone or in the fleet.This new 16/30 class sailing canoe is the product of a long-term project on the part of John Summers, General Manager at the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario. He designed the canoe while at the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York. The ABM has a long standing as a bastion of the mahogany speedboat crowd, but it deserves at least equal stature as both a repository and an enthusiastic reproducer of classic small craft. The fact that Clayton and the Thousand Islands region have long been the hotbed of sailing canoe development (see sidebar) led Summers to a natural interest in promoting the type. A survey of existing boats and enthusiasts exposed, however, a situation without much promise for growth: owners were reluctant to bash their lovingly restored antiques around the buoys, reproductions were challenging and therefore expensive to build, and the bloody things were difficult and uncomfortable to sail.
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Sail surface? Main y Mizzen?.
P.M.V.
Where can I get plans?
How can I order plans?
When the review was published in 2009, this was the information provided:
Plans for the 16/30 canoe can be ordered from the Antique
Boat Museum, 750 Mary St., Clayton, NY 13624; 315–686–4104;
http://www.abm.org
—Ed.