Monday, July 3, 2017
A Time of Rapid Change
The prediction of great wind and rain didn't come through and today there are heavy gray clouds above as I portage to Lake Union. I walk in a sun break, then I walk in a sun shower, and then the rain changes to sleet and back to rain again. So it goes all of the way to the lake and then some. But, it is a fresh day and it reminds me of the beginning of spring in the midwest with bright sun, wind, and a bit of snow that everyone knows is just a farewell for winter. Hardly a bird to be seen in Lake Union, the shoreline entirely dead at the hand of marinas, houseboats and shipyards. The worst runoff in the lake isn't pollutants anymore, it is people that have built there houses on water, and the effect is no different than paving a wetland. Only the deep water birds and swallows find sustenance here. Portage Bay is no different, but ah, Union Bay, the garden. And I paddle into the garden with many herons today, with the west lodge goose nest in good order, with a snipe trying unsuccessfully to hide from me. I circle the bay just to breath it all in, dry cattails, ducks, geese, but no eagles. It has been two weeks since I've seen them hunting and with the coots scattered carelessly about, it is likely that the eagles are eating something other than coot for the time being.
I stop and examine the four scent mounds (photo) in the burial island channel. The castoreum of the beaver is clear on two of them and while it is not an unpleasant smell, it does not drive me mad with passion. Sunday, May 7, 2017
child of nature
I return to my canoe via the Harrison Portage. Too long, much too long has passed since my last trip. it has been almost 4 years since I could not remember my last day in the canoe. But, the short term unfamiliarity gives me thought - while I have always enjoyed the outdoors, I have never been so much a child of nature as I am now.

There are golden eyes and buffleheads in the big lake and just a quarter mile north of the put in, a harbor seal and I share a second's worth of surprise. It is tennis ball calm today - I can see them from a few hundred yards. It is also cloudy but sun comes through at times and in places. The water is cold, but the air warm enough that my fingers return to comfort, once they are in the air.
Crows are making a racket when I near the swimming beach. I move in closer to find a small hawk with a pigeon. A couple with a small child also nears and asks me what it is. I reply, "lunch." But, I get out and have a nice chat. The man has just returned from fishing in Alaska. Like most people one meets in Alaska, he knows that everyone everywhere is a bit crazy in some way...just get over it and have a talk.
At the big lodge, red wing blackbirds are trilling and an eagle sits in silhouette over the south nest some 400 yards off. I stop in the small patch of marsh that I call the sedge meadow. I stand in my canoe and admire the spot.

Geese seem to be pairing up already. They are getting noisy, but haven't reached full rambunctiousness, yet. So, I head out into midbay to look the new dirtbergs over. It still amazes me how the lake bottom rises up in the winter from gases trapped in the peat. While I'm doing that, I spot a motor skiff heading in my direction. I have to admit that I am always a bit suspicious of motorboats, but someone hollers my name and I know it is 3-Stars with a friend. The four of us (3-Stars has a blue-healer dog) sit and drift in mid bay for a half hour discussing the birds and animals that we see.
It was an important day.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Image of Design 1812

As a follow up to my posting about Whistler of Paget from Saturday, I did find some good images of the boat. Here's one. Image courtesy of Beken of Cowes, one of the very best marine photographers, from 1965. The image is incorrectly entitled Quest of Paget. Note there is not yet a name on the transom.
Postscript: I stand corrected. I researched this a bit more and in fact two boats were built: Whistler of Paget for De Forest Trimingham and Quest of Paget for his brother, Fenton. There was but 38 lbs difference between the boats. I believe Paget refers to one of the nine parishes of Bermuda, where De Forest Trimingham was a member of Colonial Parliament.
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
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Thursday, February 16, 2017
Building a canoe out of a log
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Wednesday, January 25, 2017
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Building a boat is a massive job for 1 who has no expertise in wood operating at all. Nonetheless, several vessel plans are now becoming sold on the net by skilled watercraft builders. Designs differ, from the simplest towards one of the most advanced blueprints. Wooden boat plans will be the most effective choices for newcomers to obtain started on a boat creating project. There are many forms of wood that can be utilized to construct your initial boat for example mahogany, merbau, Keruing, iroko and okoume. Even so, 1 of the ideal and most inexpensive supplies that you just simply can use is plywood. Plywood is extremely straightforward to manage and just is not tough to reduce into just about any needed pattern or size. It goes effectively with epoxy which will be used to fill the boat's seams. Most watercraft builders can execute on the material alone having a great deal of ease. They do not have a tough time with regards to assembly either.
Plywood for your wooden boat plans is just not challenging to find. Nearby hardware shops have these and are sold at much far more inexpensive expenses compared to fiberglass. At present, the boats which you see in most hobby centers or schools are truly made of plywood. Wooden boat plans that make use of this material are really simple to comprehend and comply with. When operating on your watercraft, make certain that the boat strategy is laid out in an place so you are going to be capable of refer to the guide every now right after which. As soon as you've all of the materials and tools, you are able to begin working around the wood pieces which will make up the boat. If you will find pieces that do not match collectively, by no means force them. It really is advisable to take your time in measuring the supplies just before you decide to cut them. Check the boat method cautiously for those who have developed any blunders or if you have overlooked any information on certain actions. This normally takes location once you rush your project, so don't do so. It requires time to finish this project especially if you're a beginner. In case you happen to be enduring time constraints, the longer it'll take for the watercraft to be finished also.
When utilizing plywood in wooden boat plans, take note that this material should be layered and covered to preserve the wood's strength. There is certainly also marine level plywood that is a bit considerably more costly than the typical builders' grade. It'll also carry out extremely nicely for the building. Seal all of the gaps of one's boat with epoxy, as this truly may be the extremely very best material to hold the pieces of plywood together. This truly is component in the common vessel building approach known as stitch and glue. Pay focus to particular surfaces just like the bow and make specific that your seals are all tight in all segments. The three point mating surfaces generally are one in the most challenging to seal, so make sure you check these locations cautiously. If you finish your wooden vessel, you have got one fantastic investment that will last for any actually extended time.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Cree Hunters of the Mistassini
I just finished re-watching the fantastic 1974 film, Cree Hunters of the Mistassini which is available on the National Film Board of Canada's new site. This outstanding bushcraft film shows 3 Cree families in their winter hunting camp living off the land for 6 months. Amongst the amazing footage of trapping beaver, building a lodge for 17 people, construction of Mistassini style snowshoes, are some fantastic scenes of the men paddling their canoes.
A few screen shots show the main focus of the film, Sam Blacksmith, paddling with a Cree style paddle. It's been painted a deep green colour (which contrasts very well in the winter snow). The shots of the men skillfully navigating white water in their canoes is especially exciting, as the narrator mentions that none of them know how to swim since the water temperature is so cold year round. Despite not having any lifejackets and such, these skillful paddlers handle the river rapids with utter confidence.

Sam Blacksmith paddling his winter hunting grounds

Sam paddling a creek in the midst of an early snow
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
The Four Roots of Boatbuilding
Old though it is (1976), Basil Greenhill's Archaeology of the BoatGreenhill identifies four "roots" of boatbuilding, from which, he argues, all boat types derived:
1. Rafts and raft-boats: a craft which is not watertight -- i.e., it does not enclose air. Its buoyancy comes from the buoyancy of the boatbuilding material itself. A "raft-boat" is basically a raft with a more or less boat-like shape, i.e., pointy at the bow, like the Brazilian jangada. Raft building materials include logs lashed together, bundles of reeds, and air bladders like inflated animal skins. Greenhill states that Chinese sampans may have evolved from rafts. The paired illustrations shown below are an intriguing bit of evidence to this effect.
Above: a sophisticated Chinese sailing raft, with movable daggerboards and capable of upwind sailing.Below: the bottom of this sampan shows similarities to the raft above and lends credence to the theory that the sampan is one of the few extant boat types that derived from rafts, rather than dugouts.
(All images in this post are from Greenhill's book. All may be clicked to magnify.)

2. Skin boats: in which a skeleton built of sticks is covered by a skin, either animal skins or a waterproofed fabric. Obvious indigenous examples include kayaks, umiaks, coracles, and curraghs. These evolved into a very limited number of modern types such as folding kayaks and canoes. (Greenhill states that the basket-boat is a variation of the skin boat. The book, a survey, doesn't give evidence for this conclusion, and I'm skeptical that they share a common ancestry. I suspect that the basket boat may be a fifth, very small, root, which wasn't further developed.)
3. Bark boats: the American birch bark canoe being the obvious example, and the only well-developed one.
4. Dugouts. A hollowed log in its earliest iterations, the dugout was elaborated and expanded upon in many directions, and evolved into most of the boat types we know today. The evolutionary process took place in many phases, at many times and in many places, and it was far from a smooth, linear movement -- which is why we have such a diversity of plank-built boats today.
A log that has simply been hollowed out has limited seaworthiness and, as they get larger, they become quite unhandy. Simply but, they're too narrow and too shallow. The first stage of evolution, then, was the "expanded" dugout, in which the hollowed log is heated from the inside (top image in the graphic below) , usually with boiling water, and its sides are then forced apart with shores (left bottom). Not only does this increase the beam, but it forces the ends upward, creating a true "boat" shape that is both more aesthetically pleasing and more seaworthy.
The process does, however, make the boat even shallower (i.e., reduces freeboard), so the next step is to "extend" the hull by the addition of a single plank on each side (right bottom). Different cultures invented different methods of fastening the plank: pegs, stitches, mortise/tenon joints, dovetail inserts, and so on.
Top: dugout heated to soften. Left bottom: expanded. Right bottom: extended by the addition of a strake.
This was probably how plank-built boatbuilding got its start in Western culture. But since evolution doesn't progress linearly, it didn't work that way in all cultures and at all times. The Polynesian outrigger canoe, for example, is a dugout that is often extended but not expanded. The large cedar dugouts of the Pacific Northwest were expanded but often not extended. Of course, the Indians of the Pacific Northwest had enormous trees with which to work.
The balam (below), from the Bay of Bengal, is a sewn boat that Greenhill calls the "ulimate development" of the expanded-and-extended dugout. Based on a dugout hull that essentially acts like a backbone keel, it has been extended by the addition of five strakes.
A balam from the Bay of Bengal
Friday, November 4, 2016
After a lot of hype we finally made it into Edenton NC
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| Sunset with Odin in front of Plymouth (replica Roanoke River) lighthouse |
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| Replica of iron-clad CSS Albemarle |
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| View of the new city docks from the lighthouse |
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| When all else fails, the Captain can start taking bicycles apart |
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| Leaving the Roanoke River for Albemarle Sound |
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| Docked in front of the "other" Roanoke River Lighthouse in Edenton free Town Marina |
We've been hearing about Edenton since the Dismal Swamp Visitor's Center. Every time we told someone we were going to spend some time in NC and the Albemarle, they told us you HAVE to go to EDENTON. Did it live up to the hype? Yes. A beautiful, quaint, small town on the water. Several excellent restaurants, a coffee house and anything else you need is here. Highly recommend. If you make one stop in the Albemarle, it should be here!
Friday, September 23, 2016
Voyages of Rediscovery in Ontario
Voyages of Rediscovery is an educational organization operating mostly in Washington state, using canoes and canoe-related skills as means to teach history and environmental and cultural studies. They use and build birchbark canoes and fiberglass canoes dressed up to look like birchbarks.
This spring and summer they will teach birchbark canoe building to young people of the Bear Island Band of the Temagami First Nation, in Ontario. The organization is raising funds to produce a feature-length video of the project, to use for further fundraising and publicity. Their fund-raising site has a series of shorter videos, including one documenting the construction of a 25-foot bark voyageur canoe.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Death of a stereo

That's better Willy, and it also has 12 volts? Good job. Does the display light up at all? It's blank? I have some bad news for you Willy. I think your stereo has passed on.
Yes Willy I know it's only six years old. Remember I helped you install it. No, that's about how long most of them last...if you're very lucky.

I'll stare at it, push some buttons so it looks like I'm trying to do something. Verify it has power, and maybe give it a solid whack on the side. Speaking of that, give it a good thump right now.


What should you do? Go to the store and buy an inexpensive stereo, and install it. If you need some help, give me a buzz. Thank you Willy for the offer, but no I don't want the old broken stereo for parts. Willy, I've already told you several times the LORAN system is long gone. You should get the old antique box off the boat before you list it. Sigh, yes Willy I know it still works, it just doesn't have anything to listen to anymore. You're selling a boat, not a museum Willy.
The photo of the corroded IC was taken by Wikipedia user Binarysequence.
The photo of the melted transistor was taken by Wikipedia user Yoyomin.
Monday, September 5, 2016
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