Dec 04, 2005
Boat maintenance and black helicopters.
Photos, videos and paddle blanks.

Aug 10, 2006. More thoughts on boat coverings

I got email from Will Samson of the UK asking me not to forget about cotton canvas as a boat covering in the next revision of my Aleutian Kayak book. I must have mentioned on the baidarka mailig list that I was switching over to synthetics. The main drawback of cotton is that it rots after so many years. How long it takes to rot varies. Could be anywhere from 2 to 5 years or even longer. And canvas doesn't all rot at once. It progresses from the ends of the boat where more moisture is trapped and air takes longer to get to.

In any case, Will told me that the canvas he has been using is treated with a water repellent and has held up for 6 years. So, very good. No problems with cotton canvas. The nice thing about cotton is that it tightens up when wet and loosens up when dry.

Nylon, which I have started working with lately loosens when wet and shrinks when dry. It also shrinks when it heats up, like when your boat sits on top of the car and the sun beats on it. This is not a problem if the skin on your boat is slack, but it is a problem if you make the skin tight. Then, the skin can get tight enough to bow in the ribs and compress the frame end to end. I think that aluminum tubing boats are a little stronger than wood and so you can go with the heavier fabrics, but on a wood frame boat, you definitely have to stay with the lighter weights so you don't get your frame crushed. They also don't put the fabric on too tight.

I'm still learning and still haven't found the ideal combo of nylon weight and tightness.

But if you're living in the UK or Europe, nylon is hard to get in any case and cotton canvas is a much more reasonable thing to put on your boat, mainly because it is readily available.

Aug 4, 2006. Aleut Hats

Picture of a bentwood hat I made for Ft. Ross living history days.

When I was up in Cold Bay, AK this spring for Aleut culture camp, Mike Livingston was making bentwood hats. I hadn't been all that interested in making hats, but seeing Mike make the hats and the details of what goes into the process, inspired me to try my hand at it.

It was recorded that a hat was half again as expensive as a baidarka in the days before Russians arrived in the Aleutians. Assuming a price of $3000 for a kayak in today's economy, that would make a hat worth $4500. Why so expensive? I never could quite figure that out. But seeing Mike and the students making hats from planks of spruce I started to get an idea. For one thing, you needed a pretty big piece of wood 16 inches long and 14 inches across. You had to work it down pretty thin and then bend it without cracking. Considering that all this had to be done with stone and bone tools, you start to appreciate the difficulty. And after you had done all the prep work, you could still have the hat crack on you. So the price of the hat had to include all the failed attempts. But the hats were also painted with elaborate designs, and pigments had to be collected far and wide and mixed with blood from the painter's nose. So you paid not only for the wood and the shaping of it, but also for the decoration. Aleut society was sufficiently evolved and had a surplus of labor so that some people could become experts in both boat building and hat making. A hat was a luxury itemthat only the more well to do could afford.

One of the steps in making a hat is to construct a jig that will hold the steamed wood in the correct shape while it dries. Here I have mad a jig for a full crowned conical hat and am fitting a paper pattern to it. The pattern is then traced on the wood which is cut out, soaked, steamed and bent.

And here is a jig for a long billed visor. Visors are a little easier to bend than full hats.

Aug 1, 2006. Ft Ross Living History Day

It was the last weekend in July and once again Ft. Ross living history days. Ft. Ross is a state historical park and so, on a periodic basis, it puts on various events at which people show up in period costume. The period in question is 1812 - 1841 during which the Russian American company launched an experiment in farming which was to produce food for their operations further north. The experiment ended in failure and so was abandoned. Ft Ross, you might say is a monument to failure. Agriculture is not practiced in the area today. Some ranches border the ocean and graze cattle. But farming of crops is not done along the Sonoma coast. A few miles inland, however, past the coastal hills, lots of farming goes on these days.

Here, John Petersen is sitting on the log, modeling the Aleut bent wood hat I made and accessorising the view of our shelter. Note how the right half, John's half of the shelter is much better arranged with improvised tent poles and ropes, etc.

The same picture as before, only this time in black and white to give it more of an old-time feel, as if photography had just been invented.

In any case, our contribution to living history days is to turn up dressed as Aleuts and occupy the beach with our baidarkas. We camp on the beach and paddle the water. We also answer people's questions about kayaks.

Overnight, I left the Aleut hat hanging on the ridge pole of the shelter and in the morning, John pointed out to me that someone had moved into the hat. Picture taken. Aleut hats typically have various sorts of carved ivory critters adorning them. I may have to carve a little frog to adorn mine.

And every year there is a church service lasting seemingly for hours if you attend it. And when it is over, the priest and his entourage and various members of the congregation trail down the hill to the beach for the blessing of the boats and anyone that happens to be surrounding the boats.

Here the group has hit the bottom of the hill and is about to walk onto the beach.

And here the good father and his assistant spread holy water over the boats, first round, and then on all the people in the vicinity, second round. The appropriate strategy is to keep your head bowed to avoid a wet face and glasses if you wear them.

And here is a picture of some of the Aleut crew, getting ready to be blessed. Right to left, Marcus Koenen, Mike Higgings, Doerte Mann, Dave Littlejohn.

Aug 1, 2006. Highway 1 Revisited

Leaving Ft. Ross, we went down hwy 1, the pacific coast highway. This is a temporary highway in my estimation since portions of it periodically slide into the ocean. Mostly this happens in the winter when it rains, the ground gets waterlogged and turns to mud, prompting it to slide downhill in response to the tug of gravity. But the road is not up against the sea in all places. In some places people have built houses up against the cliff. In this case, two houses have already made the descent to the beach.

And here is the same highway just south of Pacifica. This section gets re-built periodically. The winter storms undercut the cliffs and the call of gravity becomes irresistible. I have kayaked the bottoms of these cliffs and found a number of cars at the bottom of these cliffs as well. Some drivers are impatient and cannot wait for the road to descend to the beach.