When I lived in Wabasca a group of us (mainly teachers) got together and decided to build a fleet (six) of MiniCups to sail on North Wabasca Lake (20 miles long and five miles wide). Three of them were completed and we sailed like jolly jack tars in every weather. We learned to sail by doing it and had an absolute ball capsizing and righting and luffing and in irons and learning windage the hard way. One girl capsized off the point and her mast and rigging (unsecured) dropped out and is presumably still stuck in the mud somewhere. We had to tow her home behind my boat cursing a blue streak.I had a rather heavyweight friend who went for a sail with me and on the way home the wind/wave angles conspired to keep filling the cockpit with water, which worried him, but not me. We had tested the boats when they were new by filling the cockpit with water and piling six people on the hull, we could get it to draw three inches of water that way, otherwise they were corks, unsinkable.
One of them ran onto a sharp rock and had to have a fiberglass patch, mine had the mast step ripped out when the leverage of a sail full of water and a partially unstepped mast got the better of mere plywood. That was a major repair but it gave me a chance to strengthen that area so it was a good thing. I think it was a good experience for some of the folks who had never before done anything with wood other than look at it, and at less than $200 per boat nobody had much to lose.
One of the other three boats was not quite completed when the owner hauled it away, but was finished in Halifax and sailed on the Atlantic Ocean. The other two were hauled off in pieces by the owners and may have been completed later but I never heard.
When I wrote to Peter Stevenson to order another daysailer plan I told him this tale and apologized for using one set of plans for so many boats. He wrote me a very nice letter and included a set of plans for the Weekender with notes for some modifications he had made. I still plan to build it when I have time and money to spare and hope to sail on Wabamun and Lac Ste. Anne and even on Isle Lake as my great grandfather did.
Paddle back.
Reurn to The Manor
