How to Make a Kayak Sail
A kayak is fun, until you get tired of paddling. Then you think about how nice it would be to have a sailboat. For those people who want to leave some of the work to mother nature, and harness the strength of the wind on a kayak, there is the kayak sail. It's a round, free floating sail that provides some extra pull while on the water.
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Instructions
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Shape the steel wire into a circle about three feet in diameter. Use a bending form like a barrel to do this, or cut out a circular form from a sheet of plywood. Then wrap and coil the wire around it, using clamps to hold it in place.
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2
Cut two half circle sections of nylon fabric from your swatch with curved ends that you can sew together into a circular sail. Each should be about four feet long, but the length depends on how much give you want your sail to have. Each section must be exactly the same shape. Create a form from cardboard to accurately trace the measurements onto the nylon fabric before you cut. Follow a set of sail plans if you need added guidance (see resources).
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3
Stitch the shapes together along the ends using a sewing machine. This may take some skill and time if you never used a sewing machine before, since the two ends are not straight but curved.
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4
Cut a 1/2-inch slice at one end of the sail. Ten fold over the edge of the sail about 1/2 inch at the end of this cut. Stitch along the edge of the fold about 1/4 inch back until you get to the other side of the cut. Leave this as a gap through which you can insert the wire rod. .
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5
Stitch four loops of nylon fabric that are three inches long to four "corners" of the sail about a half inch from the edge.
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Slide the wire rod into the gap to form the circular sail.
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7
Attach hook clips to the ends of four 1/8 inch, three-foot lengths of polyester string.
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Hook the clips through the four loops, then use the hooks on the other end to attach the sail to you while you are in the kayak.
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