Homemade Sail Kontiki

Hello. Today I am going to tell you how to make a sail kontiki. In short a kontiki is an unmanned raft (practically anything that floats and catches the wind) that is blown out into the water and takes 25 baited hooks further than you can cast. So lets get started!

I used PVC piping to make the structure. See measurements below

Other than that you will need

• Tape
• 4 Hose clips
• 4-5 x 1m x 40mm lengths of PVC pipe
• 2.6m of 100mm PVC pipe
• 4 40mm PVC elbows
• 6 40mm PVC tees
• 2 100mm PVC elbows
• Elbows
• Expanding Foam
• 3x 2x2cm plywood squares
• 1 Hinge
• D-shakle
• 4 100mm end caps
• 4 40mm end caps
• Screws
• Some kind of hard wearing fabric
• Glue
• Line, traces and reel

You will require some tools including:

• A smart tool
• Drill
• Screwdrivers
• Glue
• It might pay to have a few rags close because the glue can be messy

Using a smart tool or hand saw, with the 40mm pipe cut 2 pieces at 20cm, another 2 pieces at 52cm, a further 2 pieces at 27cm, 1 piece at 70cm, 2 pieces at 33cm. Finally for the mast you need to cut 1 piece at 60cm and a further 2 at 33cm.

Next on the list is putting it all together

It is pretty self explanatory as you can imagine and see in the photo above.

First put the 20cm pipe first then glue a tee, then add the 52cm piece add a tee on the other side then finally add the 27cm followed by a end cap. You need to do this twice. Overall both sides should measure roughly 110cm.

Secondly cut 4 10cm pieces so you can stick the elbows on to the tees. Glue these on all the tees followed by the elbows. Next we have to put the cross pieces on so at the back put the 70cm piece of pipe across where the tees are. We then have to make the pipe where the sail mast goes up. So, glue the two 32.5cm pieces onto either side of a tee and then glue on at the front. Finally you need to get the 100mm pipes and glue elbows on the front and put end caps on the top of them and at the back. Then use the hose clamps to hold them on fastly.

Well done it should look more like a boat now than a bunch of pipes on the ground:)

Next on the list is making the sail!

First we have to make the mast, so glue the 60cm to the end of the tee and glue the 2 33cm pieces either side.

Next is making the hinge, so the sail can fall down once it goes out far enough. I will tell you how to get the sail to go down further down the page

So, get a 40mm whole saw and drill a whole in a piece of wood. Then get the plugs that come out of the wood. After that, poke them down the pipes - one in the tee at the front and one in the bottom of the mast. You then have to screw a screw right through the pipe. Then cut out the two 3x3cm and screw on top of the two pipes. Then screw the hinge on either side of these. Ideally the sail should fall towards the front It should look like the above picture.

Finally we need to put the cloth on which is fairly simple as you can imagine. Just cut out a 70x50cm piece of cloth and cable tie it on to the top and the bottom (closest to the hinge and the top).

To get the sail to go down we created a small wood piece as seen in the last photo with a hole. This is so you can tie a barley sugar on the under side and the other side of the string is tied to the top of the sail. Then, once the barley sugar melts the sail falls down and you can pull it in easily.

Last but not least, you have to make an attachment to the mainline so you can pull it in once you have left it out long enough. This is one of the simpler parts. So cut out 2 rectangle pieces of pallet wood and screw them so they are perpendicular to each other. Then you bolt a bracket as pictured and put a d-shackle through the two holes as you can see. Finally you screw or bolt it onto the back pipe.

You need to buy traces and a reel with line and crimps on it. They have to be at least 1.2 m apart

And now for the fun part! Using your kontiki. First clip the reel on to the d-shackle and let it go out a little way until you get to the crimps. Then clip the traces on missing out one stretch between crimps because putting them right beside each other causes them to get tangled. You can put up to 25 hooks on the line. As you can see above picture me and my friend Tanner with our catch after leaving it out for less than half an hour!

You could also make your own traces which I will show you in another instructable!

This is the first Instructable i have made so give me some feedback in the comments!

Have Fun!!!!