Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Another Boat Nut (and Good Friend)

My good friend, Fran DeFaymoreau came down from Long Island two weekends ago for a visit. Fran is another long-in-the-tooth International Canoe sailor and at Sugar Island Fran brought his latest brainstorm, an older Chrysler MFG Sidewinder he picked up for $100 or so. Fran's idea is to put a canoe stern on this boat, a sliding seat and make it into an older gents EZY canoe. For Sugar, all Fran had the time to do was plop an International Canoe rig into the Sidewinder. He quickly found out the Sidewinder leaked like a sieve and the jury rigged IC sail plan was just this side of pulling something out and falling overboard. Fran is an excellent boat builder and given time, he'll have a working concept.

I have two pics of his drifter sail in his Sidewinder/IC at Sugar Island.



at

3 comments:

  1. AnonymousDecember 25, 2010 at 9:20 PM

    Leaks are now fixed and the necessary tweaks to the rig have turned this derelict into a nice day sailor. It could use additional stability in a breeze. The canoe seat is built but I may opt for racks and a trapeze. Fran

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousAugust 1, 2011 at 10:35 AM

    Do you think the boat will hold to having a trap on it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. TweezermanAugust 4, 2011 at 7:17 AM

    Putting a trapeze on. First problem would be the rig as the IC rigs aren't sized to take the compression loads of a guy on the wire. You might need to add some lowers or a msst ram to help keep it in column. And the mast step and structure underneath would also need to be beefed up to handle the compression.

    As far as the Sidewinder having enough stability to add a trapeze, depends on your skill level. I always felt the Contender dinghy to be a solo trapeze singlehander that most average dinghy sailors could attempt to handle. The Sidewinder is shorter and I think narrower, so it would be a tippier platform to trapeze from (compared to a Contender).

    ReplyDelete