Club Fleets

Seaspray Catamaran - Very Active www.canadianseaspray.com

Windsurfing, Bic Techno 293 One Design Sailboard, Kona One Design - Very Active

Various Kayaks - Very Active Contact Larry/Betty 403 378 4211

Nacra, Hobie, etc., Catamarans

Other Dinghy's and larger Cruiser style sailboats - various types -

Newell Sailing Club and the Sea Spray

Catamaran

We invite any sailor who sails a Sea Spray catamaran to join Newell Sailing Club. We can offer helpful information, inexpensive storage, competition (if you like), weekend Sea Spray events and camaraderie. We have a large fleet of these boats in our club and find them to be excellent single hand, lively to sail, sailboats for Lake Newell. We also find these boats to be generally inexpensive to buy, easy to fix up and with proper maintenance a valuable investment that tends to hold value.

Catamaran sailing is fantastic fun. Additionally you can view the Beach Catamaran Sailing in Alberta website at:

https://sites.google.com/view/albertacatamaransailor/home

Sea Spray Catamaran Explained

The original Sea Spray design was car top and weighed around 150 pounds with sock sails. The halyard rig was more convenient to use on Glenmore Reservoir and hence most of the fleet has halyard masts. The original boat dating back to the 1960’s was built as a race boat for single-handing and to act as a trainer for the Olympic class Tornado catamaran. It was first built in Southern California. Later boats were built in Calgary and California.

The first halyard masts just added a plastic track to the tube mast so the weight gain was minimal. Fred was selling the boats as a family day sailor and it soon became apparent the boat needed to be built stronger. The halyard extruded mast was a given. Also the boards and rudders were not able to take the heavier load so the dagger board trunk and rudder castings were made heavier. Finally the lay up of the hulls and deck were a bit heavier. When the boats were last being built the flotation foam and foam core brought the boat all up weight to 200 pounds(some less) and most times the flotation foam became waterlogged and added additional weight.

This in my opinion was not the original concept. The present day modified race boats are more aligned with the original single hand race boat. They are usually more convenient to sail and usually faster. I think that if I were to use a halyard rig on my blue boat it would still be under 180 pounds. This boat was built in the early 70s with the original narrow bows and thin rudders and ¾” wide dagger board trunk.

I think the original idea of the “classic” was to get newcomers interested in competing. The rigging was halyard but all other options for boards etc., were left open to allow the sailor the ability to modify things if he or she chose to.