Category Archives: Falcon kayak sails

Fresh Water Interlude: Paddling Pitt Lake

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Wednesday May 23, 2018

An Osprey perched atop a piling

With a “long weekend” running from Wednesday to Friday, I wanted a trip that maximized paddling and camping time and minimized driving time. And it had been several years since I’d paddled nearby Pitt Lake. So less than an hour after leaving home, I was unloading the kayak and gear at Grant Narrows Regional Park. As I packed the ‘yak, I was surrounded by vast flocks of bird watchers. I recognized at least two common species: the Full-Breasted Matron and the Pale-Legged Lesser Warbler, identifiable by its Tilley head plumage and its distinctive call: “Shirley, where’s the sunscreen? Where’s the sunscreen?” Continue reading →

A Review Of The Falcon Kayak Sail. Part 2: Exhilaration

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a selfie with the Falcon kayak sail

My prior experience with commercially-made kayak sails has been mostly with the Pacific Action sail and the Spirit Sail. I used them both for more than a decade on my previous kayak, and loved the versatility of being able to raise either or both so I could sail in anything from strong winds to gentle breezes. They were especially fast on broad reaches. But they are functionally square rigs, optimized for downwind sailing. On my new kayak, I wanted better across-the-wind performance and some upwind ability. So I upgraded to a Falcon Sail.

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A Review of the Falcon Kayak Sail. Part 1: Installation

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A Falcon Sail on the bow of a kayakI’ve been messing about with commercial and home-brew kayak sails for more than a decade, using them for both day trips and expeditions. After owning a Falcon Sail for nearly a year, here’s my take on the installation process (I’ll cover the sail’s performance in another post.)

To help you put my experiences in context, let me cop up front to being mechanically declined; I do a lot of hacks and mods to my kayaks, but I rarely get things exactly right the first time. So my first attempts at installing the sail involved many loud curses along the lines of “Come on, you Falcon thing!”

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