Sail away..

Posted on September 5, 2008

What happen with my 28″ Hawaiian double hull voyaging canoe you may ask ?
Well I had to make a new sail and finished the rigging by August.. A few days later
the canoe was sold and sailing, or rather shipped, to a collector on the mainland.
And here I am again, thinking about a more efficient, more hydrodynamic racing canoe..

DAY 3 TO 12

Posted on August 4, 2008

Ten days have gone by since writing my last post. The building of the 28 inch double hull canoe I had designed a few days ago was finished yesterday August 2nd with the rigging being the remaining task to be done.
I was near to mount the sail today would it not have been for a moment of inattention.
Indeed I had spend several hours crafting the sail when, within a fraction of a second everything went to waste. In wanting to clean the sail I somehow lifted one corner of it
to fast and it broke. That was the end of that. I will have to make a new sail tomorrow.
Otherwise I am very satisfied with the canoe. I used highly figured Koa for the bow and
stern tops as well as for the stacked up rims.

DAY 3

Posted on July 24, 2008

The entire day I was occupied in finishing a Salomon Island war canoe, the famous
“Tomako” used to go hunting for ‘heads”. But this model has been commissioned to serve as a gift to be offered to a famous author about Pacific history and culture .I am posting here a picture of the prow
ornaments of the canoe but further details can be seen in my Flickr.com album “Hawaiiancanoes”. I have a special liking for the Salomon Islands canoes. Indeed
I find them to be some of the most gracious canoes ever built in the South Pacific.
Ingeniously plank built, rather than carved, the prow and stern of those war canoes
are exceptionally tall and beautifully decorated with shells and feathers, as well as
with the famous nguzu-nguzu figure. Another type of canoe very similar to the
Tomako, and plank built as well, is the Filipino banca (boat) from Lake Taal.
If their hull shape and impressive prow and stern looks very much alike the Tomaka,
they differ however in that the Tomako has no beams and floats whereby the Filipino
banca is invariably equipped with a set of 2 double outriggers, sometimes 3 for the
larger bancas. And again, there is a further type of canoe whose hull shape and construction is remarkably similar to the two previous ones, and this is the Perahu
katir from Java.
After spending most of the day on the Tomako model, I hurried to draw the lines
for the 2 hulls of the voyaging canoe as viewed from top. Without that set of line
drawings I would not be able to calculate the height of the beams nor have a proper
idea regarding the shape and width of the beams.

MY DOUBLE HULL SAILING CANOE

Posted on July 22, 2008

Its one of those days again when I get impatient to make something different,
and it does not really matter whether it is a Hawaiian or any other type of
canoe or ship, but simply one that is not alike the canoe models I made in the
last few months and which invites to be imaginative and creative to build it.
This process mostly starts in the middle of the night. I wake up and
pictures start forming in my mind. I see the lines of the boat or canoe, I can
visualize its beauty. I go through the mental process of building
or carving the model, piece by piece, step by step but fully aware that things
are easier done in one’s imagination than in reality. And it’s with this in mind
that I try to foresee the difficulties in wanting to
build this or that model and figure out solutions to resolve them.
The entire visualization process will stay fresh in my mind for days and I put
some of those mental pictures onto paper today by drawing the lines of that
Hawaiian sailing canoe that kept me awake for a couple of hours in the middle
of last night. The line drawings can be viewed on my Flickr.photo-album under
Hawaiiancanoes.

“HAWAIIANCANOES” ON FLICKR.COM

Posted on July 11, 2008

I will never forget this very sunny day of May 13th 1995, en route from Mililani to Honolulu to visit the various Pacific Rim canoes that were meeting on Oahu and mooring on Pier 36, also called The Keehi canoe lagoon.
It was an exciting day as I was very conscious that such a gathering of various type voyaging canoes in one single place may not happen that soon again, maybe for the duration of an entire generation.
I felt that there was a unique occasion to take photos of all those canoes, in particular to take pictures of the construction, lashing and rigging of each one of them so that when the time comes that a next generation or group of people wants to build the same type of canoes, they will not again have to figure out how those vessels were built and assembled. Indeed, some of those proud canoes will end up bowing their prow on a sandy beach and slowly go to waste in the burning sun of the Pacific. All that will be left is some photographic documentation of their construction and ensuing epic voyages across and beyond the Polynesian Triangle.
I remember meeting Ben Finney at the Pier, in my eyes the real hero of that fascinating story called “HOKULE’A”. Ben Finney’s book “Hokule’a, the way to Tahiti” was the inspiration for my very
first scale model of the double hulled voyaging canoe.
Ben Finney explained to me the origin and signification of the prow ornaments on the Te’Aurere canoe while I was taking pictures of it.
Crew members of the Hawai’iloa invited me on deck and let me take pictures and measurements, while others, on the Makali’I took down the mast.
I shot 6 rolls of film negatives that day and when I came home placed them all into a box with the intention to have it developed within a few days. Days became months and month’s years.
Some 13 years later I finally had those negatives developed and their photos are now on Flickr.com for everybody to see and study.

JACKFRUIT

Posted on June 17, 2008

The Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) is a species of tree of the mulberry family and its fruit is the largest tree born fruit in the world. The fruits can reach 35 kg on wight and up to 90 cm in lenght. It is a tree native to South East Asia and the very first time I saw its wood I was absolutely mesmerized.
No wood, to my knowledge, is of such a bright yellow as the Jackfruit. It is a soft to hard wood which lends itself to a beautiful polish. Unfortunately it will oxyde with time and in the presense of day light, and turn slowly to a braunish color, however this process may take up to 3 years.
I have been told that on Oahu, Wahiawa is the town where one can find most
Jackruit trees and indeed it is from there that I have recently been give a truck load of Jackfruit logs.

Writer’s block

Posted on June 13, 2008

A famous author said that having a writer’s block is either when one is thinking to much of himself or when having nothing to say about oneself !
My reason for not writing here, lately, had more to do with what was happening on the political front of our country. You see, having to make a living during day time, I could not wait to sit in front of the TV at the end of each day to listen
to what all those political pundits and so called experts had to say about some politicians and other political pundits and experts. Actually I have to admit I let myself be endoctrinated, brain washed, lied to, made to hope , to curse, clap my hands, stand up and cheer, and so, no wonder I very quickly ended up with a total writer’s block, feels like a kind of a hangover by the way, unable to even write a check to cover the gas bill…
The party is half way over…and the big mesmerizing speeches are already part of history.
Its time to resume my work and write my own humble little stories.

Day four and sail away..

Posted on February 6, 2008

Of course I always feel great satisfaction once I put the last touch on a model, but I am also very critical of my work. Maybe not noticeable to the layman, but I am unhappy with the width of the masts. They are not exactly to scale. Also, some of the rigging is not sufficiently stretched. To much pull on one side and it will hang loose on the other side, so I start to tighten the loose cordage only to loosen up the opposite rigging. The rigging is a real pain on such a small model and it takes hours and a ton of patience to do it. I sometimes wonder how I can do this nitty gritty stuff with my “carpenter” type hands.
Tomorrow the model will be crated, together with its base and showcase, and shipped to Maui

Day 3

Posted on February 4, 2008

After my third day of working on this model, the deck and the mast steps were placed and I started to mount the railings. When ever it may enhance the beauty of a model, I like to use different type of exotic and indigenous color coordinated species of wood to build my canoes. So for example on this small Hokulea the deck is made out of curly Koa and curly Primavera, Noni for the railings and Macademia for the big water guard, Tamarind for the manus.

Bart’s sawmill.

Posted on February 1, 2008

Once upon a time there was a beautiful, although unkept , nursery right behind the white fence you see in the enclosed picture. Actually there was no fence those days, alongside H2 freeway, only those Koa Formosa trees. Various species of palm trees and some indigenous plants used to grow in this nursery. Wild boars loved to roam and forage in it, not for palm tree roots or seeds, but for the many passion fruits that grew around the vinery. Behind the houses that are there now used to be Bart P. sawmill and I vividly remember the many logs of Eucalyptus Robusta Bart used to store and mill at this place. The sawmill has gone and so the passion fruits. The boars made space for the people to move in but they are not gone, I can still spot them, sometimes 6 to 8 at a time, foraging for fallen mango fruits.

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