the canoe thing

Some of you are aware of my recent infatuation with doing the open canoe thing a la Ray Mears. The floating down the river was always the main theme, to which end I’ve bought/obtained/made all the bits and bobs one needs to undertake such a trip, but of course with my customary lack of money it won’t be Canada, rather a more sedate journey as benefits my status as an over 50 – down the upper reaches of the Thames, or if I’m feeling particularly adventurous – the Wye. These as you will have noticed are both ‘rivers’ ie moving water on which I have no experience worth noting. However on more open bits of water like the sea, I’m more at home so as well as these river trips I’ll probably head off to Scotland during May to ‘go exploring’ on some of the more accessible lochs. It also needs to be May in order to avoid two specific irritants – midges and kids.

Kids are reasonably easy to avoid – just go somewhere mid week and out of the school holiday period. Midges are less easy to time and therefore steer clear of. Now everyone knows about the infamous Scottish midge which can ruin a holiday on the west coast in about ten minutes. Some people are more susceptible than others, and there’s around a million quid or so coming to the person who comes up with a guaranteed 100% successful way of keeping them at bay, without resorting to mozzie nets, deet or going to Spain instead of Mull.

The situation is now further muddied by my usual ideas about adapting/ tinkering/ rebuilding what I already have or in this case the building of a new canoe for solo use. The new canoe will be lightweight and somewhat experimental and space age-ey but is essentially a modern take on the traditional wood and canvas canoes [which were a then modern take on the traditional birchbark canoes]. Construction is in lightweight pieces of pine, forming a frame not unlike the way old time aircraft were built. The frame is then stiffened by using Kevlar yarn placed in a sort of cats cradle way, tension being placed on the Kevlar which then places compression on the struts. The whole is then skinned with sailcloth and heat shrunk into place with a smoothing iron. A couple of coats of paint to seal the Dacron and job’s a good’un.

The canoe goes by the name of a ‘geodesic aerolite’ construction- design Snowshoe 14/ and apparently it will take me and all my gear. So that’s ok then.

I’ve got the plans, the kevlar, the stickums and the Dacron, now all I need is the wood to build the frame and the strongback, the mouldings and the ribs. The ribs and some of the framing will need a little bit of getting, since they need to be made from ash, and green ash at that. Luckily there is loads of ash in the vicinity and the job will likely entail finding a suitable sapling, felling and cleaving to the 30 or so ribs I need.

I'll update on this soon since I'm well into the build, yes I know I should've posted this much earlier