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.
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  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.
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 The Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) is a species of tree of the mulberry family and its fruit is the largest tree born fruit in the world. The fruits can reach 35 kg on wight and up to 90 cm in lenght. It is a tree native to South East Asia and the very first time I saw its wood I was absolutely mesmerized.
No wood, to my knowledge, is of such a bright yellow as the Jackfruit. It is a soft to hard wood which lends itself to a beautiful polish. Unfortunately it will oxyde with time and in the presense of day light, and turn slowly to a braunish color, however this process may take up to 3 years.
I have been told that on Oahu, Wahiawa is the town where one can find most
Jackruit trees and indeed it is from there that I have recently been give a truck load of Jackfruit logs.
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A famous author said that having a writer’s block is either when one is thinking to much of himself or when having nothing to say about oneself !
My reason for not writing here, lately, had more to do with what was happening on the political front of our country. You see, having to make a living during day time, I could not wait to sit in front of the TV at the end of each day to listen
to what all those political pundits and so called experts had to say about some politicians and other political pundits and experts. Actually I have to admit I let myself be endoctrinated, brain washed, lied to, made to hope , to curse, clap my hands, stand up and cheer, and so, no wonder I very quickly ended up with a total writer’s block, feels like a kind of a hangover by the way, unable to even write a check to cover the gas bill…
The party is half way over…and the big mesmerizing speeches are already part of history.
Its time to resume my work and write my own humble little stories.
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 Of course I always feel great satisfaction once I put the last touch on a model, but I am also very critical of my work. Maybe not noticeable to the layman, but I am unhappy with the width of the masts. They are not exactly to scale. Also, some of the rigging is not sufficiently stretched. To much pull on one side and it will hang loose on the other side, so I start to tighten the loose cordage only to loosen up the opposite rigging. The rigging is a real pain on such a small model and it takes hours and a ton of patience to do it. I sometimes wonder how I can do this nitty gritty stuff with my “carpenter” type hands.
Tomorrow the model will be crated, together with its base and showcase, and shipped to Maui
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 After my third day of working on this model, the deck and the mast steps were placed and I started to mount the railings. When ever it may enhance the beauty of a model, I like to use different type of exotic and indigenous color coordinated species of wood to build my canoes. So for example on this small Hokulea the deck is made out of curly Koa and curly Primavera, Noni for the railings and Macademia for the big water guard, Tamarind for the manus.
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 Once upon a time there was a beautiful, although unkept , nursery right behind the white fence you see in the enclosed picture. Actually there was no fence those days, alongside H2 freeway, only those Koa Formosa trees. Various species of palm trees and some indigenous plants used to grow in this nursery. Wild boars loved to roam and forage in it, not for palm tree roots or seeds, but for the many passion fruits that grew around the vinery. Behind the houses that are there now used to be Bart P. sawmill and I vividly remember the many logs of Eucalyptus Robusta Bart used to store and mill at this place. The sawmill has gone and so the passion fruits. The boars made space for the people to move in but they are not gone, I can still spot them, sometimes 6 to 8 at a time, foraging for fallen mango fruits.
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 Day 2 of making the small 12″ Hokulea model. Certainly the most tricky and time consuming step in building this small model is connecting the 2 carved hulls with their wimsy small beams at their precise intervalles. Honestly I hate to do it. One would need kids hands, everything is so small and pieces tend to fly away at the slightest interference. But once all this is done, its time to place the gunnels and the hull to hull spreaders. After that its plain sailing so to speak although I still need to assemble or place more than 100 little components to call it Hokulea, and each little individual component needs to be cut, shaped, sanded and lacquered before it can be place on the model.
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 Its a long time I have not done a 12 inch scale model of the Hokulea and I feel a bit anxious to get on with it. But like always when dealing with a new model or one that I have not done for a while, I need to dig out plans or have new ones made, dig out templates, scale down sizes, check the lines, select the woods I will be using etc, basically spend an entire day getting stuff together and than finally, the following day, a small model of the Hokulea is in the making starting with 2 small pieces of Koa.
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 The Kiawe tree.
Kiawe trees are descended from a single tree planted in 1828 at a corner of a church in Honolulu. By 1840, thanks to the seeds collected from that first tree, progeny of the tree had become the principal shade trees of Honolulu and were already spreading to dry, leeward plains of all islands.
In Hawaii, Kiawe is most common on leeward costal areas but it some locations, however, it can be found at 900 feet elevation.
Kiawe, for most Hawaiian, is synonymous with barbecue chicken, ono grilled food, as it is mostly used as fuel.
Its wood is dark braun , extremely dense, with a beautiful polish.
If there are many Kiawe trees along the leeward side of Oahu, there is only one, to my knowledge, along Kamehameha highway all the way from Haleiwa down to Pear Harbor, and it’s a 20 foot high tree located near the bridge crossing Waikalaloa stream near Waikalani Drive.
I can’t explain why, but I feel much attached to that tree and would hate it if ever somebody would cut it. Somehow that tree symbolizes the urbanization of central Oahu and he stays there like the last stand before the backhoe and front end loaders move in.
Move in they did, but not to build houses, rather to build berms along that stretch of the road. And like a bird that shall not fly away, they cut the nicest branches of that sole kiawe tree for it not to hang over the highway.
Some other rather interesting trees grow around that area, namely some Pomelo trees bearing extremely beautifully shaped and colorful fruits as well as many coffee trees.
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