Boat-Building and Boating

by Daniel Carter Beard

How to Make a Lee-Board for a Canoe

Now that the open canvas canoe has become so popular the demand has arisen for some arrangement by which it may be used with sails. Of course it is an easy matter to rig sails on almost any sort of craft, but unless there is a keel or a centreboard the boat will make lee-way, i. e., it will have no hold on the water, and when you try to tack, the boat will blow sideways, which may be fraught with serious results. The only time that the author ever got in a serious scrape with his canoe, was when he carelessly sailed out in a storm, leaving the key to his fan centreboard at the boat-house. Being unable to let down the centreboard, he was eventually driven out to sea, and when he became too fatigued to move quickly was capsized.

Fig. 140.—Lee-board. Fig. 140a.—Bolt and thumb-screw.

Now to prevent such occurrences and to do away with the inconvenience of the centreboard in an open canoe, various designs of lee-boards have been made. A lee-board is, practically speaking, a double centreboard. The paddle-like form of the blades of the boards given in [Fig. 140] give them a good hold on the water when they are below the surface, and they can also be allowed to swing clear of the water when temporarily out of use. Or they may be removed and stowed away in the canoe. As you see by the diagram the two blades are connected by a spruce rod; the blades themselves may be made of some hard wood, like cherry, and bevelled at the edges like a canoe-paddle. They should be a scant foot in width and a few inches over two feet long, and cut out of three-quarter-inch material. The spruce cross-bar is about one and a half inch in diameter, the ends of which are thrust through a hole in the upper end of each lee-board. A small hole is bored in the top of each lee-board, down through the ends of the cross-board, and when a galvanized-iron pin is pushed down through this hole, it will prevent the bar from turning in its socket. A couple more galvanized-iron pins or bars fit in holes in the spruce cross-bar, as shown in the diagram ([Fig. 140]). At the top end of each of these metal bolts is a thumb-screw which runs down over the thread of the bolt. The bottom or lower end is bent at right angles that it may be fitted under the gunwale of the canoe, and tightened by twisting the thumb-screws. The advantage of this sort of arrangement is that the lee-boards may be slid backward or forward and so adjusted that the canoe will sail in the direction in which it is steered. The place where the lee-board is to be fastened can only be found by experiment. When it is too far toward the bow, the boat will show a desire to come up against the wind, thus making work for the steersman to keep the wind in the sails. If the lee-board is fastened too far toward the stern the canoe will show a decided determination to swing around with its stern to the wind, which is a dangerous trick for a well-trained craft to indulge in.

I have seen open canvas canoes at the outfitting stores marked as low as seventeen dollars, but they usually cost twenty-five dollars or more, and I would advise ambitious canoeists to build their own canoes, and even to make their own lee-boards, although it would be cheaper to buy the latter.

How to Rig and Sail Small Boats

To have the tiller in one's own hands and feel competent, under all ordinary circumstances, to bring a boat safely into port, gives the same zest and excitement to a sail (only in a far greater degree) that the handling of the whip and reins over a lively trotter does to a drive.

Knowing and feeling this, it was my intention to devote a couple of chapters to telling how to sail a boat; but through the kind courtesy of the editor of The American Canoeist, I am able to do much better by giving my readers a talk on this subject by one whose theoretical knowledge and practical experience renders him pre-eminently fit to give reliable advice and counsel. The following is what Mr. Charles Ledyard Norton, editor of the above-mentioned journal, says: