Monday, August 22, 2011

International Canoe; Let's go to the Video Tape

Time to wrap up the International Canoe posts for a while with a video of a German sailing an older International Canoe. In fact, this IC looks suspiciously identical to the King Ferry glass hull/wood deck IC's that Steve Clark was building in 1981 and the IC "No Eyes" I raced in the 1980's.

This video gives the viewer the true sense that, once you get out on the sliding seat, there's nothing static about sailing these craft.

Couple of things to point out;

  1. The dangly rope led to the outboard end of the sliding seat is the jib sheet. It allows the jib to be adjusted while you're hiking at the end of the seat.
  2. The German owner hikes the IC the same way I used to hike, wrapping my ankles and shins around the bottom edge of the sliding seat. Most IC sailors don't do that, they hike off a hiking strap that spans the middle of the seat from one end to the other.
  3. He's got a very funky mainsheet arrangement. Most mainsheets just attach to the back end of the seat carriage with a cleat on the back or the forward beam of the seat carriage.


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4 comments:

  1. TillermanAugust 22, 2011 at 12:21 PM

    Do you all use your teeth like that?

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  2. TweezermanAugust 22, 2011 at 3:01 PM

    I know, the proper technique is to use your tiller hand instead of your teeth but sometimes on the IC, there's too many different strings to pull at the same time. Also, it looks like this guy may not have a cleat on his mainsheet, which makes it almost necessary to use the teeth at some point.

    As far as my upcoming sea stories about my other 1981 World regattas; to paraphrase the Wicked Witch of the West, "all in good time".

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  3. TweezermanAugust 23, 2011 at 6:12 AM

    Actually, after looking at the video again, he does have a mainsheet cleat. And his teeth are serving as ancillary mainsheet management. Since the mainsheet travels out with the skipper to the end of the seat and doesn't have a nice cockpit to reside in, the tail of the mainsheet has a tendency to want to trail aft, porpoising in the wake of the IC; a pain in the ass as you are now trying to sheet against the pull of the mainsheet in two different directions.

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  4. AnonymousAugust 23, 2011 at 4:57 PM

    It looks to me that the IC is made for those with great tolerance for pain...

    ReplyDelete