A review of 2 fast trimaran sailing canoes. They're swift sailboats ... and also great for a do-it-yourselfer who wants to saves some money on a sailboat.
If you research fast sailing canoes on the web,
the name Gary Dierking is going to come up. It’s inevitable.
Why?
Because Gary is not only an authority on these types of watercraft, he wrote a popular book that can be found on Amazon and a host of other places on how to build them.
As a matter of fact, I own a copy of Gary’s “Building Outrigger Canoes: Modern Construction Methods for Three Fast, Beautiful Boats.” And it’s a wealth of information.
Most of Gary’s canoes are Proas (sailing canoes with a single outrigger), but a couple of his models would be of interest to many small “do-it-yourself” small trimaran enthusiasts - the “Wa’apa” and “Tamanu.”
What is a Wa’apa? As Gary puts it, it’s very simply a “3-board-canoe” that originated in Hawaii and other Pacific islands around the late 1800’s, when sewn lumber became available. It’s supposedly a fairly easy-to-build type of trimaran. If you visit the SmallTrimarans.com website you’ll see a video of the Wa’apa as it glides along very nicely in the water. The footage was apparently taken during Watertribe’s Everglades Challenge race. And it sure looks like fun.
His book, which you can get from Amazon, includes plans for his Wa’apa, which can be built as either a proa or trimaran. But he allows for larger sail rigging to create a faster sailboat when a Wa’apa is going to be used as a small trimaran.
The Tamanu design is not included in Gary’s book because it was designed after the book was published. There is information on Gary blog about it though, including information on how to get a set of building plans for yourself.
Like the Wa’apa, the Tamanu is an appealing sailboat … but for a different reason. As Gary himself writes, “The most important difference between the Tamanu and my other designs is the self bailing footwells. The hull is completely decked over making it suitable for more ambitious cruising. The Tamanu can be configured with a single outrigger, double outrigger, or as a catamaran.”
Those “self-bailing footwells” sound very appealing if you’ve ever worked to bail out a small boat.
While Gary’s designs are not pitched for top speeds, they are fast. Both of these small trimaran designs can reach speeds of about 12 knots or so, which is about 14 mph). The real genius of Gary’s designs, though, lies within their elegant simplicity.
It’s relatively easy for a good designer to create a boat that goes fast while spending a lot of money. But it’s much more challenging to build a boat that hits good speed while being held together with materials like bamboo, polytarp, and cord ties (which sailing canoe builders in Pacific regions commonly use).
If you build a Dierking Trimaran model using marine grade plywood and epoxy then you’re looking at perhaps a thousand bucks in overall cost - not multiple thousands. And for anyone who has never built a trimaran (or any other boat for that matter), it’s hard to beat these designs or building approach.
