Sarum Boats: July 2011

7/30/11

Visit to Manzanita, Oregon

While on a family vacation in Oregon, I realized we were next door to Cape Falcon Kayak, so I went over to check them out. On a Thursday, a class of six were coating the skins of their kayaks. We watched for a while and admired the boats.

Greenland-style kayak

Skin-on-frame Adirondack Guide Boat

Owner/teacher Brian Shultz applying polyurethane 'goop'.

Boats turned to coat decks.

7/3/11

Summer paddle

Leisurely paddle on the Housy with Maia and Rachel.

This little inlet off the main stream was a still-water pond covered with green vegetation (duck weed?). It looked like the boats were sitting on a grassy clearing.

Boat Building at Salisbury School

This is a record of boat building at Salisbury School, a boys' prep school in northwest Connecticut. In 2002, Eliot Hovey finished his Annapolis Wherry, from a Chesapeake Light Craft, stitch-and-glue kit. He rowed it to a very respectable fourth-place finish in the Blackburn Challenge.

Since then, students /faculty have built sea kayaks; lake kayaks; a couple of prams; Oxford rowing shells; one canoe; a Chester Yawl, a skiff and two surfboards from kits.

Along the way, I learned how to build low-seat, skin-on-frame, solo canoes, which have become our most popular project. After a few of those, I built a ‘recovery’ kayak and a plywood coracle. As of summer of ’14 we were up to seventy-five boats (I’m not counting the surfboards as boats). My lifetime total is well over a hundred boats.

I've also built three West-Greenland style kayaks and four coracles; for the blog of the latter, go to Steel Coracle.