Ailuk Sailing Canoe 

Thanks Alan

the helman uses a rudder and steers it behind his back... when they tack to move the rudder to the other end of the boat...The outrigger always stays on the windward side of the boat... the canoes are really wide and are perfect for their location and for what they are doing most of the time transporting people and bags of Copra up and down their atoll Ailuk. no big seas as they are behind the reef and motos. As they canoes are now made with plywood and stick and glue they are much lighter than they would have been in the past...they can easily be dragged out of the water every day. as you can see in the video they had fun pushing it a bit and flying the outrigger ... but they were always ready to either let out the sail or head in wind to bring it back down again. Thanks for the interest...I have tons of still images of the boat construction details if you are interested...cheers David

@@davidhartmanphotography David, thanks for the reply. You bet, I'd be interesting in seeing your still photos of modern stitch & glue plywood construction of the sailing canoes in the RMI. Where do I find the the photos? I did not see the canoe photos on your webpage link seen at the end of the video. I appreciate you mentioning the construction photos. "Canoes of Oceania" by Haddon & Hornell only provides details of traditional construction. Janusz Ostrowski at Pjoa in Poland has the only plywood S & G building plans (for their 5m pjoa Folk canoe, based on their production model pjoa Laguna) that I am aware of -- that looks to be a refined, tested design, and fairly close to the RMI canoes. Maybe adapted for sailing in colder water, not as wet. I lived in Hawaii in the mid 1970s, and have retained an interest, that has ebbed & flowed over the years, in the navigation methods and watercraft of the Pacific Islands, especially the outrigger shunting designs, ever since then. Motivated by seeing the stitched together canoes at the Bishop Museum, and of course living there during the time of the initial Hokulea voyage to Tahiti. However, I was out to sea submerged somewhere in the W. Pacific during the voyages, and never saw the Hokulea under sail, only tied to the wharf in Honolulu harbor. If I still lived by the sea I'd probably want to own a similar Marshall Islands or Caroline Islands canoe. My best practical option for first hand experience with these type of watercraft is probably building as accurate a model as possible. Oh, btw, I am a David, too. Kom̧m̧ooltata.

Hi, I'm christophe from France living in Cox's bazar Bangladesh and building canoes and kayaks made of pvc...these days... I'm interested to give sails and outriggers to my canoes and the traditional designs of your video seems quite fit for a developing country where everything is not available yet... Any plans available? Best regards, Tata

When they capsize I think this happens: the main hull is more buoyant and the ama is lighter, so it floats with ama up in the air and main hull and sail on surface of water. Nothing underwater. So to right it they stand on main hull and lean back using a rope, the ama comes down on top of them and sail goes up. With nothing underwater it's easy to right.

@@davidhartmanphotography how can they move the outrigger while sailling?

lots of these videos have super noisy wind, maybe that was the case here, too

They are pretty amazing. Transforming out design with contemporary materials.

grad you enjoyed watching it. it was wob=nderful to experience it. So sad to see the tradition boating disappearing as most families end up loosing access to the water and fishing.

totally agree its an amazingly modern design. What is nice is they have embraced modern materials. They are using plywood and stitch and glue construction for the hulls and tarps for the sails. Their boats are a lot lighter than they would have been originally built.

absolutely... super special experience.

Its about 30-35 ft if inremenber correctly.

Pleasure i felt privileged to get to see them and ride on one. It very sad that its disappearing throughout the South Pacific.

Its all about transporting people and bags of coconuts which they harvest from one end of the usland to the other end. Perfectly suited to skimming over the shallow areas of their atoll. Plus the wind tends to blow in same direction all they time so no tacking involved.

It was pretty cool experience 👍👍