Kayak fishing and sailing are not a natural match. Simply, it’s harder to fish from a small watercraft that’s equipped with a sail, and for a variety of reasons, being that your fishing lines can easily get entangled in your kayak’s sailing rig, and the latter can also get caught in tree limbs, if you happen to launch, beach or fish near trees.
As an additional means of propulsion, a sail is less reliable than a motor, and considerably harder to use.
Having said that, sailing can be fun, especially if you know what you’re doing, and if your kayak is suitable for sailing in the first place, which most kayaks aren’t, in fact.
This movie demonstrates high performance sailing with the W500 –
The movie shows the sailor exerting excellent control over his W kayak both seated and standing up, while sailing fast upwind in strong wind. The W kayak is seen both tracking and maneuvering easily. It is not even outfitted with outriggers, although such accessories would have added both safety and ease of use.
Sailing and common kayaks don’t go together well, for a number of reasons, which are:
Unless outfitted with serious outriggers, kayaks are not stable enough to support a real, high performance sailing rig.
Common kayaks track poorly even when paddled, and unless they’re outfitted with a substantial rudder system and a keel, or a leeboard, they won’t sail to any direction except downwind, which isn’t sailing in the full sense of the word…
Common kayaks offer their operator too little control even when paddling is considered, and do not pass the minimum requirement for user control when sailing is concerned.
Such kayaks (I.E. sit-in and SOT) may be fit for one of those tiny downwind sails, if you’re willing to have such a device on board while you’re casting lines and landing fish. For any other matter and purpose, you should get a W kayak outfitted with a large size sail, or a sailing dinghy. Canoes sail pretty well when properly rigged, preferably with at least one large size outrigger.
More about sailing fishing kayaks >>