Longer, greater volume amas would be better yet for sailing, particularly if you’re stuck in a small cockpit in the middle of your boat. For paddling or light air sailing, Russell’s beauty gave as little drag as possible kissing the water and submersing---yet it is drag on the end of a lever. But it gave the stable ‘not tippy’ feeling of a multihull.

‘93, Jim drew a little sailing/paddling trimaran for Wilderness Systems, and sent an early model. It looked like a kayak with amas. But the design evolved more to a sailing trimaran than a paddling boat, becoming the WindRider 16.

‘96, summer, Lake Michigan. Rice and I reach down swells meeting shallows. He’s in his 17 foot Klepper with short, fabric amas, and a rock in the bow seat. Puffin is 15 feet overall with 2/3rds the sail area of the Klepper. But our speeds were about equal. Howard’s balloons cut anxiety, though, and he didn’t capsize. What can I say? I was in little shore surf, turning into the trough, and shouting about dinner to Ron Sell on the beach, when....

‘97, Cedar Key I sailed a WindRider 16 with plenty of wind. The year before I’d drifted around in one for a few minutes and had no fun paddling. With wind it was great, wet, and speedy. I couldn’t trip it over the leeward ama.

‘98, Jim designs the WindRider 17 tandem/double with a stayed rig and lifting bow shape. She’s become a more powerful sailer, he says, comfortable in seas offshore. But do you want to paddle her? Or put her on your roof? Can you carry her on your shoulder to the water, with rig and paddles in your other hand? Now I know why, a decade ago, Russell sighed and changed the subject.

Amas on kayak hulls can offer:
  A) safety because of resistance to capsizing
  B) higher performance.
But B is more elusive as amas and rig shrink, or more costly to paddling and user friendliness as rig and amas grow.

Look at a group of experienced multihull sailors in Michigan. Four of them, and Howard, are getting sisters of Meade Gougeon’s monohull cruising, sailing canoe, Serendipity. Three own G32 cruising catamarans. One has a Tremolino. Two own trimarans that have dominated Great Lakes racing for thirty years, including Mackinac races, and are also featured in the “Multihulls” 25th Anniversary issue. A third owns a Kettering Tri-Foiler, and the same one has cruised Lake Huron’s North Channel on a Laser. Three have sailed monos and multis to or on other continents. One has paddled flatwater competitively with single and double paddles. And they’ve had scads of beachcats. Over the years they’ve owned as many boats each, as any of my boathead friends. Now they want a good paddler/sailer, simple and cartoppable---and as capable as they are.

Look at Jim. At age 62, he drew and built his 1st monohull---Bottle Nose---a 14 foot by 28 inch innovative kayak/decked canoe with a simple upwind rig.

Remember, please, the obvious differences between sailing next to a friend in another boat along a friendly shore in warm water, half an hour from an organic sandwich/espresso shop, and sailing alone miles offshore, on cold briny. A wish to prevent capsizes is not unreasonable nor unseamanlike, particularly if one’s boat is narrow enough for it to happen easily. As Howard emailed, “I can tell you many times I have longed for buoyant wings of some sort in my skinny craft....” From the smallest balloon amas to big ones, all resist capsizing. And, to some extent, so does a wider, fuller boat.

So, if we could have an instantly variable, inflatable ama/aka system, with high volume amas as long as the boat, as shapely as art and science allow, which could shrink to a balloon on a stick sometimes, and anywhere in between, and then simply disappear altogether half the time. Wouldn’t it be great? And an inflatable rig, too, with better controls than, say, the fore and index digits of a bat, with a vapor flow tell-tale seeping at will from the leading edge/forefinger? Wouldn’t that be great! And then....

October ‘01. Russell’s back from a cruise to the Straits of Georgia between Vancouver Island and British Columbia. His proa, Jzerro, is in Australia. “It was really cool. I was anchored and tied off while it blew in the Straits. I had my tent set on my Tornado. A bald eagle was flying around. An osprey flew right over the tent. I was thinking how fun Meade’s little boat would be.”

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