Converting a Kayak for Sail

When Dick Vermeulen was six years old, his parents bought an 8′ wooden sailing pram and signed him up for lessons. It sowed a seed that would grow through the rest of his life. “My parents had a cottage at Green Pond in northern New Jersey. We summered there from 1951 to 1961. It was idyllic. Our cottage was a five-minute walk from the lake and there were kids everywhere.” Once he had learned to sail, Dick says, “I spent most of my weekdays out sailing and exploring the lake. The feeling of the power of the wind in your sheet hand, the little twitches on the tiller when changing course…I had total independence to go anywhere I wanted.”

On weekends at Green Pond, there were sailing races and Dick won some in his pram, but when he was 10 his father bought a Sailfish and “racing got more competitive and was open to adults. My father and I would wax the bottom of the Sailfish before each race. I weighed about 70 lbs at the time and the heavier adults could never keep up in the lake’s light winds, nor get up on plane when the wind increased.”

Photographs by Dick Vermeulen

Dick’s first Pygmy kayak was the Osprey Standard, a popular kayak among paddlers of all experience levels. He built it in 2011 and still paddles it off the coast of Maine. Its cambered deck suits his size-13 feet.

By the time Dick graduated college in 1970, boats were firmly in his blood. He had earned a degree in mechanical engineering, but in 1973 he and his wife, Lynn, moved to Maine and Dick went to work as a joiner at Luke’s Boatyard in East Boothbay. Within six years, the young couple had built a house and a shop, and Dick was making and selling kitchen cabinets. But, he says, with two children and a third on the way, “it was time to get a real job.”

For the next 12 years, Dick worked as a project manager in commercial construction—until, in 1991, “in a weak moment, Lynn gave me the okay to start building boats for, hopefully, a living.”

The Osprey Standard was followed by an Osprey Double. More than 4′ longer than the Standard, Dick built it so his wife, Lynn, could go paddling with him. Both kayaks were built of stitch-and-glue okoume plywood.

Dick established Maine Cat where, for almost 30 years, he was responsible for the design and build of a range of high-performance composite sail-and-power catamarans from 30′ to 47′. In 2005, his Maine Cat 41 was awarded “Best Boat of the Year” by Cruising World. “It was,” Dick says, “very satisfying to have my company build these boats to my design, but it did little to satisfy my longing to build my own boat.”

Which is why, even before his retirement in 2020, Dick started building boats at home—a whole bunch of small boats, including a Chesapeake Light Craft Skerry built from a kit; a Joel White 9′ 6″ Nutshell Pram dinghy, which was his first glued-lapstrake build working from plans; and a couple of Pygmy Osprey kayaks.

When Dick built the outrigger for his Osprey Double, he worked from instructions in the Chesapeake Light Craft sailing rig manual. The two bulkheads in each of the amas were extended above the deck to provide connection plates for the amas.

He started on the single Pygmy Osprey in 2011. “The kids,” Dick says, “were out of the house, and it was time for me to build a boat for myself that could achieve 5 knots—if you push it—under human power. I figured that sitting with your butt below the waterline and a spray skirt around your waist while pushing through 2–3′ ocean waves would demand some attention and be hard to match for getting the adrenaline going.” He chose the Osprey because the cambered deck panels would allow ample room for his size-13 feet and, with a 24″ beam, it offered good stability for an inexperienced kayaker paddling the lower reaches of Maine’s St. George River and the coastal waters around Port Clyde.

The Osprey did not disappoint. Since building it 14 years ago, Dick has paddled extensively along the Maine coast, most recently cruising from Spruce Head to Birch Island, crossing Muscle Ridge Channel, some 3.5 miles of open water. Inspired by the Osprey Standard, three years after building it Dick decided to build the tandem version. “I built it to share with Lynn. She’s not a sailor and even though she’s put up with my many sailboats, she’s not comfortable when the wind starts to blow and things start tipping and getting exciting—she’s pretty sure we’re all going to end up in the water, and swimming is right up there with sailing as an activity to be avoided.”

Fully assembled, the finished rig took up a good deal of the workshop space. Dick installed 1⁄4″-thick neoprene pads under the aka flanges to protect the varnished deck.

Like the solo, the build of the Osprey Double went smoothly. Dick again worked with plans rather than a kit. “I’m an engineer,” he says. “To me, looking at a set of plans is almost better than reading a great book. And I’m always asking questions: Why did the designer choose that detail? How can I fabricate that part so it’s easy to install and will look like it was born there with as little of the glue line showing as possible. I’m not looking at how fast I can build; I’m enjoying the build.”

He built the stitch-and-glue tandem out of 6mm okoume plywood and finished it with six coats of Pettit gloss varnish on the deck and three coats of Pettit Matterhorn White EZPoxy on the hull. The only modification he made was to enlarge the cockpit opening so that it was easier “for long legs and big feet to enter and exit the boat.” And, like the solo before it, the tandem was a success. For a while, Lynn enjoyed going afloat with him, but then the engineer in Dick raised his head. What if he built a couple of outriggers and converted the kayak to sail? Looking for plans online, he landed at Chesapeake Light Craft and found their instructions for converting a kayak to sail. He bought the manual and set about building his own rig.

Wanting to carry the kayak and rig down to the water in sections, Dick epoxied support flanges to the akas but did not permanently attach them to either the amas or the kayak. Instead, he bolted the akas to the vertical mounting plates on the amas and tied them to through-bolted eye straps on the deck of the kayak. He built full interior bulkheads below the straps to take the loads. The upper mast partner is through-bolted and glued to the forward face of the aka but is not fastened to the hull.

He laminated a jig for the curvy 10′-long akas from clear 2 × 8 spruce ripped down to 1⁄4″ strips. He made each aka 2″ high by 1 5⁄8″ wide. The CLC-designed amas are 10′ long by 10″ maximum beam, and 9″ depth. Dick added 2′ to the length in the hope that it would give the amas more buoyancy when going to windward in a breeze. He realized later, he says, that he should have also increased the depth to “really keep the boat on her feet.”

Next, he constructed the amas of stitch-and-glue 4mm okoume plywood panels with 6-oz fiberglass inside and out, creating the aka connection tabs by extending the amas’ 9mm interior bulkheads—also reinforced with 6-oz fiberglass and epoxy—above the deck. He constructed the single leeboard out of two layers of 9mm okoume and attached it to the aft face of the port forward aka with a 1⁄4″ bolt supported by 2 1⁄2″ × 2 1⁄2″ × 1⁄2″-thick aluminum angle brackets, bolted through the aka 16″ from the centerline. When all was assembled the finished boat had a maximum beam of 11′ 4″. Finally, and with a nod to his work with high-performance sailboats at Maine Cat, he bought a tapered 18′ 6″ carbon-fiber mast from Forte Carbon in Connecticut, and a 3.8-oz carbon-laminate 75-sq-ft sail with three reefs from Pope Sails in Rockland, Maine.

The sail’s halyard and downhaul prevent the mast from jumping out of the maststep. The forward passenger has a clear view, unimpeded by any rigging or sail, but is at risk from spray when the kayak is sailing at speed in even the smallest chop.

The converted Osprey sails well in winds of less than 12 knots, Dick says, “but when the breeze comes up going to windward the amas don’t have enough buoyancy to keep the wetted surface to a minimum, and she develops a heavy weather helm. Off the wind she’s a rocket ship and a blast if you don’t mind the spray. I had hoped I’d be able to reef the sail while underway, but it’s not possible to get out of the cockpit, move forward, and keep the boat head to wind in order to bring the sail down—if the bow falls off the wind a hair, the luff tape binds in the bolt-rope track so the sail can’t be lowered.” As for the steering, Dick says, “I’d never sailed a boat with a push-pull tiller before, but the only issues I had were how to control the kick-up rudder from the cockpit 8’ forward of the rudder. I ended up using a bolt with rubber washers inside the rudder cheeks with a large threaded knob so that it could be tensioned just enough to stay down when sailing but swing up when going ashore. I could lower the rudder in a couple of feet of water and then hop into the cockpit. There was quite the learning curve before I got it right, and I had some exciting times steering with my kayak paddle while looking for a spot where I could land to readjust the tension. Thank goodness the rudder was easy to remove…it was often back in the shop getting the leading edge faired and reglassed.”

The kayak ghosts along in even the lightest of breezes, but when the wind picks up it flies, especially downwind.

Sadly, but perhaps inevitably, Lynn is not a fan of the sailing development. “She was in the forward cockpit and got the worst of the cold spray that’s kicked up by the forward aka kissing the tops of the waves. Needless to say, after her first sail on the outrigger she was done.”

This winter Dick’s building a 16′ Calendar Islands Yawl. He hopes at last to share his love of sailing with Lynn, but if he can’t, he says, he’ll build a second pair of oars and be happy that they’re out together on the water.

Jenny Bennett is editor of Small Boats.

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