Goose Story

The geese are starting to hatch out back of the shop. A few days ago while riding my bicyle home, I ran into this family of geese, mother, father and eight goslings on the other side of a cyclone fence that keeps people away from the water.  I stopped, intending to take a picture of the happy family but realized that I had forgotten my camera. I had to settle for just looking at them.  As I got closer to them, the father got into his protective role, lowered his head and hissed at me.  And then I noticed, off to the left, at a safe distance from the protective father, a crow, watching for straggler goslings and the chance of a meal. 
Coincidentally, three crows had showed up at the shop just a few weeks earlier, no doubt just in time to take advantage of the impending gosling season.
A few more days went by and a visiting friend told me of a crow with a broken wing that he had seen on the way in to the shop.  Ah, crow with a broken wing.  No doubt some unfortunate accident, but then it occurred to me that the crow might have gotten a little too bold and run afoul (afowl) of the father goose who had possibly broken his wing.  We cant know for sure, but for sure I got some pictures two days ago of all eight goslings still waddling and swimming about with their protective parents flanking them.

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A Few Good Reads

Im making slow but steady progress fairing the boat frame. Ill have a more detailed post on that topic before long.

In the meantime, Ive been reading quite a lot. I just finished reading two other boatbuilding blogs and a forum thread start-to-finish, as well as a new book by Daniel James Brown titled The Boys In The Boat.

For the new boat builder, I highly recommend reading boatbuilding blogs, as they give fantastic firsthand insights from other amateur builders. I hope that my own blog here will be of some help to other builders, just as other blogs have been very helpful to me. Here are links to the blogs & thread that I recently finished reading:

1. Bobs Boat Build. (Building a 16 Glen-L Malahini Runabout)
http://bobsboatbuild.blogspot.com/

2. Chris Glen-L Zip Build. (Building a 144" Glen-L Zip Runabout)
http://www.vupilot.blogspot.com/

3. Robertas ZIP. (Forum thread on building a 144" Glen-L Zip Runabout). Outstanding craftsmanship, resulting in one of the finest Zips ever put in the water. Truly inspiring.
https://glen-l.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=10702

4. The book I just finished is The Boys In The Boat — Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Its a superbly-written true story, and probably the best book Ive read since that summer in college when I read Margaret Mitchells Gone With The Wind. Many thanks to Wooden Boat Magazine for the e-mail notification on this one!
http://www.woodenboatstore.com/product/books_The_Boys_in_the_Boat/rowing_crew

Finally, heres a link to a must-read blog, (particularly if youre going to build a Glen-L Squirt):

Arts Boat Build http://artatkinson.blogspot.com/

Art built the most beautiful Squirt Ive seen. Im proud to say that I had the privilege of riding in this boat at the 2012 Glen-L Gathering. If you are considering a Squirt, but are concerned about the small size of it, I can say that the design is FAR more stable than I would have thought in such a small craft. The very first thing I thought to myself when I sat in his boat, "Work of Art," was: "Why didnt I finish building one of these?" The Squirt is a fantastic design, limited only by its two-person capacity.

Taking a ride in Arts Squirt, "Work of Art." September 2012.

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Two More Coats of Whidbey White

Ill just let the pictures tell the story...

Here you can see the flattened area & secondary indentations on the bow to accommodate the bow eye. The hull has also been lightly sanded with 220 grit in preparation for the 3rd coat of paint.

Hull lightly sanded in preparation for the 3rd coat of paint.

Hull lightly sanded in preparation for the 3rd coat of paint.

After two more coats of Whidbey White, I pulled off the tape and newspaper.

I had to do a little touch-up painting along the edges of the transom. There are several more spots that need some touch-up paint.

Sea Foam Green, Whidbey White, and bright-finished Meranti.

Ink from the newspaper left ugly stains on the paint. So far, I havent been able to clean them off. I may simply paint another coat over it. Obviously, I wouldnt recommend using newspaper for this sort of thing.

Fitting the bow eye.

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Fairing and keel

August 15th, 2014

I am finally closing in on the final stages of hull finish prep.  The third coat of epoxy just about filled the weave, and then the boat gets a quick sanding (three hours) to remove the globs, and just a fraction of the remaining bumps from the glass.  Next,  a fill with fairing compound, hand sand with the long board, then fill and fair until I get sick of it.  The keel will be installed afterwards as well as the centerboard gasket, then primer on the hull prior to turning.  The goal is to get the boat back upright and the majority of the interior finished prior to the weather window closing in at the end of October.

6 oz glass set in 3 coats of epoxy that have been squeegeed on.  

August 21, 2014

got the first coat of fairing compound (WEST 407) on it today.  It takes about three hours to apply a thin coat all around.  Shame is, I gotta sand most of it off to find the low spots.  Sundays project.  Hopefully painting by Labor Day.

August 26, 2014
8 hours of sanding later...I would highly recommend a thicker coating of fairing compound.  Too late now.  Just order more microballoon filler.  Arms hurt, ears, hurt, much sandpaper, Sanding sucks.  Oh...the bottom is ready for primer and the keel.

Sides tomorrow.

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So that didnt go quite as planned

Tilting the rear thwart upward so that epoxy would run into the gap between the 2 pieces of plywood seemed like a good idea. The only problem was, after the epoxy cured, the gap remained.

The effort wasnt without merit, however. Several different parts did get encapsulated with another coating of epoxy. Still, the gap needed to be filled.

This time, I placed the rear thwart vertically in my bench vise. I drizzled epoxy into the gap until there was no question that it had been filled.

Now the gap has been filled.

I also put another coat of epoxy on the top of the forward thwart, and squeegied it meticulously. And, I brushed a second coat of epoxy onto the underside of the sheers at the back of the boat.

2nd layer of epoxy on the top of the front seat.

Sheers taped off for epoxy & painting.

Sheers taped off for epoxy & painting.

Forward thwart placed back into position.

Marking the position for the forward thwart prior to installing it permanently.

Now, the forward thwart is ready for installation. The rear thwart is ready to be trimmed, and the sheers are ready for primer.

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Why not King Island

After I built my first King Island style kayak a few years ago, I realized that it had quite a few good features and would no doubt be a good boat for kayak replicators to build.  However, the boat did not have any kind of reputation and people werent building too many of the King Island or for that matter, any other of the Bering sea kayaks. I was going to write something about this at the time but didnt. Then I got a call from Dave Wilhelm who makes King Island kayaks and we talked about how this kayak type is under-appreciated.  You can read about Daves appraisal of the virtues of this kayak by following the link. Meanwhile, I will give you my theory of why some kayaks are more appreciated than others.
The reason is really quite simple.  The Unangan kayak, or baidarka has a larger following than most of the Bering Sea kayaks because George Dysons book, Baidarka did a lot to propagandize it.  George provides a lot of quotes from explorers who when first encountering these kayaks were impressed by their excellent performance.
Nobody has done this kind of promotion for the other kinds of Alaskan kayaks. David Zimmerly published the book Qajaq which shows plans for a number of Alaskan kayaks and he also did a book on the Hooper Bay kayak but unlike George Dyson, Zimmerly never did the kind of sales job that George Dyson did.  And so, these boats remain underappreciated.
But some of the lack of Bering Sea kayak replication is also practical.  Bering Sea kayaks are large volume kayaks made for carrying up to 900 pounds of gear.  Most recreational kayakers do not need this kind of cargo capacity and the extra volume makes for a slower boat than one built to be paddled empty.  Of course, the Bering Sea designs can be scaled down for recreational use, something that few people have done although Dave Wilhelm has moved in that direction and Skip Snaith and Sean Gallagher have as well and their efforts will no doubt popularize the type and put more of them out on the water.

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Eastern Arctic Like Kayak Performance Report

I finally did it. Finished the EA kayak with some deviations from the traditional norm, painted it and headed out to the water to see how it paddled.

There it is by the side of the water.  Launch imminent as soon as I get in and start paddling.  Weight is between 50 and 60 pounds Im guessing.  Length is just short of 18 feet about 16 of which are in the water. Beam is somewhere around 27 inches. Two paddles are resting on the boat.  One Greenland style, 88 inches long and the other, an Aleut style with a 3 inch wide blade at 120 inches long, yes, thats right, ten feet long.
The big question was what sort of speed a flat bottomed boat could be paddled.
I had my GPS with me.  At the start of the test while I was still fresh, I managed to get the boat up to 5.6 mph. Cruising speed seemed to be between 3 and 4 mph. I did my usual two mile circuit once around Ballena Island. Wind was variable, maybe up to 15 mph and wind blown waves were about 1 foot max.  So not much of a rough weather test.
Overall, the boat seems to move about adequately.  Turning with the flat bottom is easy.  The boat responds quickly.  I thought that staying on track might be a problem but it turned out not to be.  The boat had no particular tendency to turn into or out of the wind and it had adequate length so it wasnt yawing right and left with each stroke.  Paddling both down and upwind was possible without any undue steering effort required. So all in all, the boat performed well.  I would still like to take it out on a rough day when waves are more like two feet, like a normal summer afternoon on the bay.
I ended up using the 120 inch paddle for most of the trip since it seemed to be a better match to the boat than the 88 inch paddle which required more effort to reach the water.
Overall, I felt that I needed more experience with the boat.  The initial outing left me feeling that its weight and speed was such that I need to discover some more positive attributes for the boat or it would not get much use. 
Speed is of course an ill defined measure.  What matters is efficiency.  Overall, the width and flat bottom of the boat are a combination that require a good deal more effort to make the boat go than just about any other kayak style that I have built.  If I were to build another version of this boat, I would probably decrease overall width and increase flare to the sides from the 10 degree flare that I put into this model. Increased flare would decrease the width of the bottom. I probably would also go with bent ribs to reduce weight of the boat and have some V in the bottom.  With lighter weight and less resistance  to movement this style of boat would be adequate for recreational use.
As I mentioned earlier, the boat also needs some rough water testing to see how the flat bottom handles going over waves.

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