Fishing canoe with contemporary sprit sail
Posted on October 28, 2007
Hawaiian Fishing canoe with sail. Here it is, and considering that this is a first, I am quite content with. However I am still debating whether this sail is a balanced lug or gaff-sail. Maybe somebody can help me on this subject. I researched this sail for many hours in order to get a clearer picture about its rigging. This would have helped me to locate the type of sail the Hawaiian used in the last two and half centuries. But for sure it certainly was not something fancy, nor complicated considering the tools, materials and means available. What puzzled me most was whether the rope going up 4/5 length of the mast served to lower or raise the sail or simply to raise the yard in order to take the wind. I tend to believe that the yard was balancing on the mast by a simple system of goosenecks or boom iron and that there was no halyard so to speak off, but just a rope to control the yard. The boom, certainly, was attached and rotating on the mast with jaw and parral, something I tried to imitate on the model. The panels on the sail are made out of paper thin Cedar and lemon wood and bend with the help of a toppinglift. As for the hull on this model, it is carved out of some extremely curly Koa. The stand of this model has its own little history, which you can read about in the category “Woods of Hawaii” in this same blog.
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HAWAIIAN LASHINGS and the MENEHUNE
Posted on October 20, 2007
Lashing gunnel to hull on model canoe.
Can I say this ? “A Hawaiian canoe is only as beautiful as his lashings” How does that sound ? I think that canoe carvers, paddlers and sailors would agree with me. Its like to say the rigging of the old sailing ships was what made them so fascinating and mysterious. Whenever I am in the process of lashing a model canoe, which was the case today, it still surprises me how easy the procedure is for me but at the same time I am conscious that it took me 15 years to be able to accomplish a whole range of Hawaiian type lashings. I have to point out that I do lash all my models with the same type lashing executed on the life size canoe, whether this is an Opelu type canoe or the Hokulea or any other canoe. The only difference resides in the size of the thread or cord, and the number of passes. Whereby the iako of a racing canoe is attached to the hull and spreader with 4, sometimes even 5 passes, I do only 3, maybe 4 on the larger models. I said “easy” for the more common type lashings, but the lashing of the forward boom on the Hokulea as well as its stearing paddle can still make me somewhat impatient. Those are real tricky ones . If you have ever worked on the Hokulea you know that you can climb below the forward and stern tops or manus, and pull those darn cords…but not so on a model…and still it needs to look as if some menehune did climb into the model and do the miniature job. The above picture illustrates a typical ancient Hawaiian lashing gunnel to hull that I did recently on a canoe model commissioned by the Kahala Resort. If the procedure required countless hours to execute on a real size canoe, it requires a few days on a model. The very beautiful geometrical pattern of this lashing is only visible on the inside of the canoe, whereby when you look to the other side , which is the exterior of the hull, nothing of this lashing does show here. The menehune’s work…
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Crab claw or Lug sail
Posted on October 15, 2007
For a change, I am in the process of making a model of a Hawaiian fishing canoe equipped with a lug sail rather than the more common, and ancient, crab claw type sail. Indeed, once the Islands were discovered by Captain Cook and trade started to take place, the English traded many European commodities and goods like cloth, cannons, tools against sandelwood, breadfruit etc. with the Hawaiian. Slowly, the crab claw sail made with pandanus (lauhala) mattings became replaced with cloth and its shape the one of the small European wooden barges. The canoes of Raiatea were equiped with a similar type sail during the same period, although the rig is distingished by having a stick that goes diagonally up to hold the peak of the sail which makes them do be a sprit sail rather than the more unsofistacated lug sail.So far I have never seen a Hawaiian canoe model equipped with a lug or gaff sail and I am really excited to see how it will look like.
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