Tiwal 2L review: Johan from Terrace – British Columbia – Canada

My name is Johan Laing and I live in Terrace, British Columbia in Canada.

Which Tiwal model do you have?

I’ve got the Tiwal 2L family sailing dinghy and I got it last year in August.

Where do you sail?

I mainly sail just on lakes here in the north.

The most common place I sail at the moment would be Lakelse lake and the other one is Canim lake, those are the two places where I sail mostly.

Single-handed or double-handed?

I would say it’s probably 90% with somebody, it’s usually a family sailing dinghy so there’s either kids involved or sometimes a friend.

What was your experience before Tiwal?

Just watching YouTube videos and learning by myself, and that’s the other reason why the Tiwal is quite nice. Because you only have one sail to worry about.

How is it going so far?

It’s exactly what we were looking for, looked around for something compact that can fit in a motorhome, fit in the garage because the other thing is also we’ve got Northern Winters so everything’s under a meter and a half of snow three months of the year, and we’ve got inflatable paddle boards so the idea of something inflatable that should be able to work well resonated and we tried it, and like I said, it works really well for me so far and it’s a lot faster than the trailer sailer.

What characteristics did you surprise you?

Assembling I think is is surprisingly easy, the instructions are pretty clear. There’s nothing really tricky about setting up and getting going and especially with the one friend of mine that we go sailing with, with us two together I could say we’re on the water within minutes of starting to unpack.

One guy gets the sail going and the other guy gets the boat part inflated.

What is your best memory with your Tiwal?

One of the best ones is that it literally came the day before we went on a trip up north close to the Yukon last year when my parents came to visit me so we could put it in the motorhome go up North with it to a place called Boya lake which is a lake with exceptionally crystal clear waters so you can see the bottom of the lake 5 meters deep.

Crystal clear it’s clearer than a swimming pool. Yeah that’s probably the best one that I’ve had, and then just some winter sailing, we’ve got a lake close by that doesn’t really freeze completely in winter time and we actually took it out.

I think it was January or February so basically sailing while everything around you is covered in snow and it’s minus 5.

It was cold!