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.
Filed Under Voyaging canoes | Leave a Comment
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.
Filed Under Voyaging canoes | 1 Comment
“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.
Filed Under Voyaging canoes | 1 Comment