If you looked at the long lag since my last post, you might think I'd died or given up on the boat or some similar tragedy. But no, I've just been away off & on since late June, visiting Maine for my grandmother's 90th birthday and, a month later, her funeral. In between, my wife and I took a few weeks to drive to Maryland and back to visit other family and show the kids around our alma mater.
Along the way, I've been lugging around a copy of
We, the Navigators by David Lewis. It's a scholarly (i.e., thorough and somewhat dry) treatment of the various ways that Pacific seafarers managed to get around without charts, magnetic compasses, or any other modern instruments. Like any other indigenous culture, it all boils down to thousands of years of accumulated wisdom about surviving in their part of the world. Such knowledge is difficult to keep alive these days, and not something you can fully understand if you're not of the culture that produced the body of knowledge.
But Lewis sailed thousands of miles with Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian navigators to better understand their skills. He does a great job of breaking down the various facets of their navigational techniques, and explaining each. I think I got a few ideas that might help me with my much simpler coastal navigation tasks on our next charter. It was also inspiring to see what they were capable of, these people behind the indigenous design I'm building.
Meanwhile, I've resumed work on the boat. I epoxied the butt joints in the side panels yesterday, which went... so-so. I clearly should have used more epoxy; I fear that there are some voids in the joints, but they're not so bad that it would make sense to rip them apart and try again. Note to self: for critical points in the build, let's not be stingy with the material that keeps the boat together.
I still have the bottom panels to join, and there's a funny story there. I've been puzzling over the rather extreme flex that's put in the bottom panel, wondering how people manage to do that. My confusion lasted longer than any reasonably intelligent boat builder could explain.... Eventually, I realized that the bottom panel as I have it cut out is actually supposed to be halved longitudinally. So I'll be digging out the ol' saw one more time to do that cut,
then joining the fore & aft sections of each of the bottom panel
s with more butt joints next.
Finally, I came across
a very nice Flickr set from Tom Puchner, an Austrian builder. I'd seen a photo or two of his Melanesia launch party, but had missed his construction shots. They're great, as are the very artistic shots from his recent test sail with a new, hollow
ama. Any time I feel my motivation flagging, I'll take a look at the beautiful photo to the right and let it work its magic: keep at it, and this could be you sailing home as the sun disappears beneath the waves.
