Re: Anyone ever put a sail on a pontoon just for kicks?
For those that are interested. . . .
The African Queen is a pure aluminum home made pontoon boat that an Aluminum contractor/welder built for himself back in the 1980's for gator hunting in the Everglades. She draws about 12 inches, engine up.
It passed from hand to hand after the fellow died and I found it on the side of the road headed for the scrap yard for recycling, contacted the owner and gave him $800 for the title. Ugly as she was she was completely competent physically as she had no wood, plastic, fiberglass or other ready to degrade material Just Aluminum and stainless steel fasteners. I spent another $8,000.00 for a new 40hp Mercury 4-stroke and helm, which pushes her almost to 20mph. Nice for plying the shallow bootlegger waters of Homosassa Bay on the "Nature Coast" of Florida's west central gulf coast. Here the gulf waters deepens only 1' for every mile you go out.
The short story on sail rigging is that I bought a 16' of 1 1/2" poplar wood dowel, sleeved it with PVC pipe, topped it with a pulley and used that for a mast - center mounted on the very front edge of the bow. I then constructed a square sail rig with a 10 foot yardarm of same wood and attached an 8 x 10 foot white tarp as sail using zipties and stainless rings (like shower curtain rings). We hoisted this up the mast (yardarm fore of the mast) and with four lines attached to the four corners of the sail engaged what was only a weak 3 mph east wind to go due west. We had a 2mph incoming tide directly against us yet still we made headway; my gps said we were doing almost 1 mph. My brother and I were simply amazed at the efficiency factor - and for a total cost of materials purchased at home depot of about $80.
We then tested it to see how far we could sail cross the wind. We gave slack to the starboard lines and tightened the port lines causing the sail to move out and billow to port (it was almost like a kite) catching the east wind. it continued to make headway, this time due north, without any noticeable side ways slippage. I was stunned. No dagger or center boards used. just the aluminum angle metal keels that the builder had originally welded on the bottom of each pontoon to guard against stumps, rocks and reefs. I used the outboard as the rudder. We are now thinking of putting two more masts, one opposite each other on the sides of the Queen just fore of the helm and rigging jib sails 8' jib sails with 6' booms to catch the wind outside of the fore mainsail.
Since we mainly have westerly onshore winds here, coming back in after boating 5-7 miles offshore, under sail power, should be a breeze.
