Wouldn’t It Be Great?

Hugh Horton, Contributing Editor, Harrison Township, Michigan

Originally published in Small Craft Advisor, Jan/Feb 2002, Issue No. 13

September 1990.  The town dock on the edge of Puget Sound is in late day shadow. It’s cool. Russell Brown’s on his Prindle 16, stowing gear after our hurtling ride back across Port Townsend Bay. He hops on the dock, and looks like he’s about to tell me something a little unpleasant.

“Okay, Russell..., but I have to try.” I’d been talking adding amas to kayak hulls for sailing. I mentioned it several times, but never got a ringing, “Yeah, that’s great!” Or even a shrugging, “ummh...why not.”

For years I’d been experimenting with sailing rigs on kayaks. I’d sailed on beach cats, Bill Schooley’s paired hull, single outrigger Dragonfly, and many kayaks and canoes with a variety of modern windward rigs and others. I thought a paddling/sailing boat with an ama or two would be good.

They’d add stability and safety. You could use bigger sails and the waterline length of long kayak hulls---maybe occasionally go like a small beachcat.

Russell checked the Prindle’s gear and lines, and gave me a wry look. “Hugh...,” big smile, “let’s go eat.”

Russell is Jim and Joanna Brown’s younger son. Jim is one of Multihull magazine’s 25th Anniversary “Living Legend Designers.” Russell designs and builds proas, and other boats (see WoodenBoat #83, and Cruising World, March ‘01). He’s an artistic master of composite construction. Brother Steve and he grew up on the family’s trimaran, Scrimshaw.

The winter of ‘90/‘91 Russell built a little ama for Howard Rice and me. (Howard’s the one-design fanatic and Klepper sailor/paddler some of you met last month.) The ama is five feet long, 80-90 lbs. displacement. It was an experiment for a Klepper Aerius II double, and is exquisite.

Spring, ‘91. The Clinton River near Detroit. 50s, cloudy, blustery, raw. Howard and I carry a 21 foot Northwest Kayaks Seascape 2, fifty yards to the water. Out the shop, around the old house, through and over a gate in a low fence, to the stout catwalk on the failing, wooden seawall. Whew! We’ve taken many kayaks and canoes this way. Holy complicated cow! With even a flyweight, simple five foot ama and single tube aka, the Seascape’d gotten unwieldy.

On Lake St. Clair the ice is gone---an illusion of warmth. We splash around at six or seven or so knots. Howard hikes to starboard or climbs out the pipe aka. I wonder how the ice has melted.

The 1st May weekend, ‘91. A few miles south of the mouth of the Suwanee River, Florida, the seventh Cedar Key Small Boat Meet. Sunny, 80s, SW 8-12, and close to 80 feet of sail on the Seascape. Ron Sell and I grin and watch the ama slide under the warm water like a dolphin, until the water hits my crude attachment. The ama glides under while its buoyancy works five and a half feet out from the centerline of the boat.

Wet. Who cares? But the Sea Pearl 21s---600 pound, open monohull cat ketches---still fly away to weather. With the ama we have more capsize resistance, but we’re not faster than without it, nor when it’s to weather. When paddling, too, we subconsciously heel her enough to lift the ama clear.