Month: January 2012

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 >>

Why motorize your kayak, and do you really need a motor on board?
What type of solution would best fit your kayak motorizing needs – an electric trolling motor, or an outboard gas engine?
How to motorize your W kayak on a budget?
What are the practices we recommend following in a kayak motorizing project?
This new section of Wavewalk’s website is dedicated to answering these kayak motorizing questions, and others.

We see a lot in common between small boats and beach cats, canoes, kayaks and other personal water crafts and toys including jet skis, surf boards and sailing boards. It is not just their small size, but also the fact that their passengers’ physical attributes (E.G. size, athletic skills, disabilities, etc.) and behavior determine their performance.
We call this field of design ‘Micronautics’, which is part Naval Design but has much to do with Ergonomics, Bio Mechanics, and to some extent even with Behavioral Sciences.

To understand the difficulty that micronautical designers fac,e it’s enough to realize that while a supertanker can cross the Pacific Ocean on autopilot, there is no computerized system that can successfully control a kayak in the surf.

Traditional catamarans of all sizes are wider, stabler and faster than mono-hull boats of comparable size.  The W invention and concept is applicable to small, personal boats of various types and uses, and it offers to increase their stability without decreasing their speed or increasing their width.
In essence, the W invention offers increased stability by width, without paying a price in speed terms.

The W invention also offers to eliminate back pain, leg pain, leg numbness and all other unwanted sensations and injuries related to the L position that’s typical to all kayaks belonging to the sit-in, sit-on-top, and hybrid (hybrid canoe-kayak) types.

There are far more possibilities offered by the W boat concept than shown in this website. Some of these possibilities are presented on the W fishing kayaks website

The W technology is proprietary, and protected by U.S. utility patent number 6,871,608 ‘Twin Hull Personal Watercraft’, which the US Patent and Trademark Office website makes available online.

Hundreds of articles have been written about kayak related injuries, and we’d like to recommend the latest one, called Common Kayak Injuries, which is more comprehensive as well as methodical in covering these painful subjects, and in offering practical solutions, whether you’re into kayak fishing, or just kayaking.

Pedal propulsion for small watercraft has been in use since the 19th century, and it’s still commonly found in small recreational boats, often in a combination of rotating pedals with paddle wheel type propellers. Other types of pedal driven propulsion systems for small craft include rotating propellers,  hydraulic pumps, sideways moving flaps, add-on systems, and more.  Interestingly, the world speed record for a human powered watercraft is held by a catamaran equipped with a rotational air propeller.

This article examines pedal drive propulsion for common (mono hull, sit-in and SOT) kayaks from several technical angles, which are: Ergonomics – How does it feel to operate a pedal driven kayak, and what are the potential physiological drawbacks in this type of propulsion. Mechanics -How efficient are pedal drives’ pedaling systems. Hydrodynamics -How efficient are pedal drives’ propellers, and how effective is pedaling kayaks compared to paddling them. Real World Performance – How effective are pedal driven kayaks in applications such as fishing trips, stand up fishing, fishing in moving water, fishing in shallow water, launching, beaching, etc.

Read all about Paddle VS. Pedal Drive in Fishing Kayaks >>

This article does not compare the performance of sit-in and SOT kayaks, whether paddled or pedaled, with the performance of W kayaks.