CLC Kayak/Canoe SailRig

Kayaks are so easily driven that the urge to equip them for sailing must be as old as kayaks themselves. The original CLC SailRig, from 1995, has been built in vast numbers. There hasn't been a SailRig kit for years. When we noticed recently that it is the second best selling plan set (after the Chesapeake 17), we decided to study how to make the kit easy and affordable to build. 

The SailRig MK2 matches the effortless performance of the original, but features simplified construction and easier kayak attachment. The SailRig is adaptable to almost every kayak and canoe in our catalogue, and many other production kayaks as well. Mounted on a single kayak, the acceleration is neck-snapping, with good handling upwind and down and 9-knot potential. Ten-foot beam gives you monolithic stability (and thus sail carrying power with no hiking out), but the whole rig can be dismantled for cartopping in a half-hour. The SailRig components weigh only about 30lbs total.

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Touring by Sailing Canoe

Out Among the Islands by Sailing Canoe

by Bob Halsey While camping at Sugar Island, I have made several camping trips with my open sailing canoe. I sail to one of the fifteen campsite islands in the St. Lawrence Islands National Park of Canada.
Typically, after a busy week of sailing races morning and afternoon and maybe taking part in the swim around the Island race, I am ready to relax and do something different. For example, at the end of the first week of the annual encampment in 1989 on Saturday, I packed up the canoe with my tent, food, small stove, sleeping bag, clothes, most of which I put in garbage bags to protect from rain or spray. Then Sunday morning I sailed over to shore and went to early church and breakfast in Gananoque and started (from TIV motel) sailing up the river against the wind. The wind is mostly out of the SW and usually is pretty dependable. The seas were not too much for the loaded canoe and I had plenty of room to be comfortable myself. I was sailing my 18 ft cedar strip I had built the winter before and was quite happy with its performance.

As I was tacking back and forth upwind, I got a good view of many of the Islands- Corn, the Punts, Leek, Huckleberry, Bostwick, Lindsey and others. Some islands are wild, some have beautiful homes. I was planning on going to the last of the Admiralty Islands, a park island named Aubrey island, but I had to be aware that if the wind didn't hold up or if I didn't make the speed I thought I could I might have to stop at a different park island. By mid-afternoon I arrived safely at Aubrey Island. I had a government chart of the waters in a zip-lock bag to help locate myself among the islands.


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PrecisionPak CratePak Max Review

Design and construction clearly led by avid kayak anglers

PrecisionPak makes a very wide line of gear management products, waders, gloves, jackets, and other specialty textile-based outdoor products. The PrecisionPak CratePak Max is their top of the line kayak fishing gear bag. The CratePak Max includes a PrecisionPak Black Ice Cooler that I also recently reviewed. It comes in three or four different colors including hi-visibility orange or lime green, and all have a lot of sewn in reflective tape accents. This is an excellent safety feature. Mine arrived in the orange color.

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