A concept particularly suited for handicapped persons
- Paraplegics keeping some trunk mobility can easily practice kayak if the boat is equipped with adequate hit wedging and back.
- However, they often can only go sailing aboard very specific ballasted monohulls which often bring limited fun and may be awkward when heeling.
- WINDYAK thanks to her kayak layout will allow them, with the help of a limited removable device, to experiment feeling of light sailing multihulls.
- Using an innovative craft designed as well for able-bodied people is more status-enhancing, and avoids prohibitive development costs of specific products for handicapped people which can’t be written off by mass production. In practice, handicapped people sailing takes place in common sailing clubs having some dedicated means.
- Spirit of navigation proposed is joined » handicapped+able-bodied » crew sailing encouraging integration. The disabled person is seated in the fore cockpit, which doesn’t require any move during sailing. He handles both mainsheet and rudder control ; able-bodied crew can assure controls’ redundancy and assure stability and security of disabled person as necessary.
Deck lay-out has been specifically designed for handis’
- One tip of the mainsheet hoist is placed in the fore cockpit to be maneuvered by the disabled person, the other end staying within arm’s reach of the other aft crew.
- Rudder command is made by extending the steering cables (normally driven by foot by the aft crew when paddling ) to the fore cockpit. These steering cables are fastened to an hand-commanded rudder bar located between disabled person’s legs.
- Boarding and landing from a beach, either in kayak or trimaran configuration are eased by sit-on-top deck accommodation (there is no more need to tuck up the legs to slip them in the man hole). In addition the quite large depth of the boat (compared to a usual kayak) reduces the vertical translation from or to the wheelchair.
- The ability of folding floats above the beam allows to have the boat in water with beam in deployed position, while getting the hull aligned along a quay to board disabled people by using existing specific dedicated mean (crane).
- The quite important depth of the cockpit (>=15cm) all along its whole length (1,2m), which differs from most of other ‘sit-on-tops’ boats, allows to laterally well prop up the buttocks but also knees and feet.
- This depth also permits to easily protect the lower limbs by using an additional skirt, to avoid frequently observed hypothermia. Cockpit has been designed to be comfortable for people having an abnormal muscular tonus (in terms of pressure spreading, removal of any bumps, and feet position that must be lower than the bottom)
- Planned to be bolted to the deck, a dismountable back will allow to get a kind of bucket seat to ensure a good bearing when heeling (max 15°), while allowing easy paddling. Several sizes are foreseen, to be suited to various users’ morphologies.
