Sail away..

Posted on September 5, 2008

What happen with my 28″ Hawaiian double hull voyaging canoe you may ask ?
Well I had to make a new sail and finished the rigging by August.. A few days later
the canoe was sold and sailing, or rather shipped, to a collector on the mainland.
And here I am again, thinking about a more efficient, more hydrodynamic racing canoe..

DAY 3 TO 12

Posted on August 4, 2008

Ten days have gone by since writing my last post. The building of the 28 inch double hull canoe I had designed a few days ago was finished yesterday August 2nd with the rigging being the remaining task to be done.
I was near to mount the sail today would it not have been for a moment of inattention.
Indeed I had spend several hours crafting the sail when, within a fraction of a second everything went to waste. In wanting to clean the sail I somehow lifted one corner of it
to fast and it broke. That was the end of that. I will have to make a new sail tomorrow.
Otherwise I am very satisfied with the canoe. I used highly figured Koa for the bow and
stern tops as well as for the stacked up rims.

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.

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.

“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.

SENNIT/Cordage

Posted on January 4, 2008

Oceanic people fabricated very strong and durable cordage with the fiber of coconut husk, also called the coir. Strands of coir were removed from coconut husks than soaked, beaten, sorted out and separated into strands of different lengths or characteristics. Then, to obtain strands of a desired thickness, several fibers were rolled together either by hand or by rubbing it against the tight or against the palm of the foot, adding additional fibers in the process. Once enough strands in hand they were then braided, always by hand of course, into cords of desired length and strength. Sennit is still produced in relative quantity in some Austral Islands , to be used for the fabrication of local crafts and also to lash or rig real size or model canoes.
The leaf base of the coconut palm is made up of very fine and long fibers and those were used for the fabrication of baskets and even clothes. A very fine example of such a palm leaf base is illustrated hereby. I found it lying on the street and wondered how many local people and visitors to these islands know what the ancient Polynesians were capable of doing with those beautiful strands of fibers. The color of those dried fibers is a beautiful red brick color.

THE DECK

Posted on December 16, 2007

Once again I was thinking about those well cut planks of wood covering the deck of ancient voyaging canoes. At least this is what it seems to be when looking at some paintings, especially those by Herb Kane. I already stated in a prior comment that I strongly believe that the Polynesian people were capable to cut planks, or at least to have knowledge of species of wood that can be easily split with the help of wedges in order to make planks. Lets have a quick look at an ancient Hawaiian fishing canoe: there is the hull which is carved out of a tree log, than there are the two tops or manus, often carved out from the foot of the Ahakea tree, than we have the outriggers for which Hau was the ideal flexible wood ; for the ama or float wili wili was used for its buoyancy, but the canoe would not be seaworthy without the addition of rims or gunwales to the top of the hull, and see here, those are the only parts of the canoe that are actually planks of wood cut out from the Ahakea tree, which is a wood that splits very easily.
The Ahakea is a fairly short tree, reaching a maximum height of 30 to 35 feet.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Polynesians, or for that matter all the people of Oceania not only had a profound knowledge of their environment but also knew how to use it to their advantage with the least of efforts. If in today’s world we equip ourselves with a multitude of tools to fashion a little bench or mount a shelve, it was nature which provided the necessary material to the Oceanic people to build canoes using only an adze, sennit, and their knowledge of the flora of their islands.
Now having said that, how could they fashion 80 to 90 feet long planks ? What species of wood could they have been using that splits easily along its grain ? Would there have been a tree of that size available on the Marquesas ? To my knowledge, the Albizia lebbeck was and still is the tallest tree available on those islands but not really suitable for the making of planks.
So my question is whether the deck of those long ocean going voyaging canoes were covered with 80 to 90 feet long planks, and if yes what kind of tree would they have been using for this? Could it be that the deck was made with another material, or by adding length of planks until all the beams were covered ? I truly can’t believe in the latter as it would have made any double hull canoe extremely dangerous to sail.

Adze find confirms Hawaiian voyages

Posted on October 12, 2007

Was the titel of an article written in the Honolulu Advertiser dated October 7th 2007. I quote “Australian researchers have found the first physical evidence validating centuries of oral history that the first Hawaiians were skilled navigators who sailed back to Polynesia- and brought rocks from Hawai’i that were turned into critical wood-cutting tools.” We are talking about 1300 AD.” This brings me right away back to my discussion about whether the ancient Hawaiian were capable to cut logs into planks to cover the deck of their canoe. Some of those canoes were up to about 80 feet long. We know they used the following tools: the pump drill, the adze, clamps, hammerstone, rubbing stones, caulking tools, chisels, even paintbrush. The adze been a wood cutting tool, one has to imagine that the ancient Polynesians were quite capable to cut planks out of logs, given time, and time they had plenty, as well as laborers. We know that whole villages were involved in the making of a voyaging canoe.

The deck

Posted on September 30, 2007

That the Polynesians were capable to make wood planks is a fact they demonstrated very early on by adding a plank of wood on both sides of their canoe to make them more sea worthy and prevent waves splashing in. Those planks are called wash-strakes or gunnels, or also rims. In most instances, the Hawaiian used Ahakea wood for those wash-strakes. But fishing canoes like the Opelu type canoe were relatively small, maybe no more than 20 feet in lenght.  This compares very badly with the lenght of ocean going voyaging canoes or those King Kamehameha war canoes , which were anything between 60 to 90 feet long. Its at this point that I have a contention regarding “nice cut planks of wood” forming the deck of those vessels. Also, lets look at the choice of tools available to ancient Polynesian people, a choice that has been well documented. To follow.

The deck

Posted on September 30, 2007

When ever I work on a model, especially a Polynesian type one, it always puzzles me how the ancient Hawaiian or Marquesan, those seem to be the one who did build the longest voyaging canoes, constructed the deck of their canoes, in particular the planking of the deck. Old black and white photos like those in the volumes of Hadden & Hornell do not reveal much. The all inspiring paintings by Herb Kawainui Kane show most voyaging canoes covered with very long and well sawn planks lashed onto the beams of the canoe. I am not one to say that the Hawaiian or the Marquesans may not have known how to cut logs of wood into planks. After all the Egyptiens and the Incas knew how to build huge pyramids thousands of years ago and we still have not yet figured out how they could move the huge rocks needed to build those monuments. My doubt is more about availibility of material rather than whether the Polynesians were able to split logs into planks, which in my opinion they actually were capable of doing. To follow.

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