Blog
Sep 28, King Island Kayak Completed and Launched
I finally got the King Island Boat out on the water. I did not know what to expect, but have to say that overall, I was pleased with its performance. I already had two paddles for the boat, one, a Bering Strait single blade paddle modeled after a paddle in the collection of the Field Museum in Chicage.
The other paddle, a double-bladed model is based on a paddle in the collection of the Ft Ross Historical State Park in California. The paddle came with a Bristol Bay boat that has similar dimensions to the King Island type. It is 104 inches long with 3 inch wide blades.
The single bladed paddle works well enough, but doesn't really produce much speed. It was apparently used as a working paddle with this type of boat, suited to quietly approaching prey and otherwise moving the boat about.
The double bladed paddle on the other hand is nicely suited to the high deck and produces good speed. I had previously used this paddle with a baidarka but found it too long and ponderous, even with the narrow blades, but this paddle and the King Island boat are a perfect match. The extra length of this paddle makes it possible to reach the water even with the high deck.
The most fun part of using the boat was to lean it over at extreme angles. Though the deck on the boat is high and one cannot do laybacks from the paddling position, one can slide forward in the boat and get one's weight quite low. The cockpit is high enough so that even if one doesn't have a sprayskirt on, one can still lean the boat over a good deal without shipping any water. Then, with the paddle extended and the head resting on the coaming, one is stable enough to take a nap.
As a matter of fact, one can slide forward so far in this boat that one can lay on the floor and if so inclined, probably take a nap there.
I just finished my new paddling jacket that fits the coaming of this boat and have also tried hull breathing with it. No pictures available yet. The idea with hull breathing is that if you paddle in a group and capsize and are not able to right yourself, the boat is roomy enough so that you can slide inside the hull, pull your head inside the hood and breathe the air inside the hull until one of your fellow paddlers is able to assist you in righting yourself.
Rolling this boat because of its high deck would seem difficult but turns out to be quite easy in practice. All one needs to do is slide forward in the boat and laying back becomes easy because of the large cockpit. The leverage of the 104 inch paddle in the extended position is so great that one has to be careful not to overpower it.
The boat is also quite manageable even with water in it. The problem with a swamped kayak is usually that once one tries to climb back in it, water rushes into the cockpit and sinks the boat. In contrast, the King Island kayak can have water up to the gunwales but still have the coaming clearing the water by 5 inches. The hull shape is also such that the extra water does not unduly destabilize the boat. Paddling a boat full of water is ponderous of course, but is still possible.
Here is another view of the sleeping position from a more distant vantage point.
When the nap is over, one simply raises one's hands and is ready to paddle again.
Paddling from the sleeping position is something of a chore, but can be done with the long King Island Paddle. One could of course sit up, something that takes a bit of wiggling but has the advantage of giving one a view of where one is going.
Sep 28, King Island Kayak Skinned
I finished skinning the KI and have some comments about that. I used polyester this time because I wanted to experiment with a fabric that had no stretch and would not change tension with changes in humidity and temperature the way that nylon does. Results are in and I have to say that using the polyester was not a pleasant experience. Given that the skin does not stretch, one has to sew it very tightly. Unfortunately, sewing tightly pulls large holes into the fabric. Even then, with its lack of elasticity, the polyester will not make any attempt to conform to a convex shape. Consequently, wrapping a flat sheet of polyester fabric around a convex boat hull results in many wrinkles which need to be removed by sewing tucks in the fabric. Sewing tucks in turn introduces more holes into the fabric.
Nevertheless, I do not want to be entirely negative. The polyester will not shrink when the boat is left out in the sun. Neither will it get baggy when the boat is put into cold water. And the extra seams produced by the tucks give it more of a genuine skin boat look.
I have just heard that polyester is heat shrinkable. I will have to test that theory.
Sep 10, King Island Kayak Frame Completed
I finished the King Island kayak frame yesterday and am pleased with the overall result. Though I don't have a well trained eye for spotting authenticity in a King Island Kayak, it does seem to me that the boat turned out looking like the real thing as recorded in photographs. What pleases me about that is that I did a minimum of measuring off drawings and instead mostly followed the description of the building process that John Heath recorded in Contributions to Kayak Studies. What is pleasing about that is that with a minimum numberof measurements I can build a King Island kayak. Most of the work of establishing the shape is done by the wood and the building process.
What went wrong? Being that it's a first time boat, and that Heath did not record all of the building process, I had to guess at a few things. In retrospect, I could do better on some of the pieces, though I didn't mess up anything critical. Specifically, I made the bow assembly too short and had to splice in a piece of wood to extend the length.
I made some of the deck beams too curved so they end up too close to the skin. A little planing fixed that, but now I know the right way to do them next time.
Ribs and stringers look good in most of the boat, though I think the ribs turned out a little too full in the ends. Photos of King Island boats show the stringers coming right into the bow assembly and the stern piece. I think this is also a factor of the angle that the gunwales make with the horizontal plane. I think that could have been bigger as well. As a consequence I had to cut the stringers short at the bow so they wouldn't push out the skin and make the nose excessively blunt.
A waterproofing of the frame follows and a skin, after which the boat will launch.