The
Boat Shed
Volkskayaks
in Mexico
If
Only I had Remembered the Camera
Winter
Cruising
Letter
From the President
Volkskayak
Reunion
The Elson Perry is the MMA boat that is being built by Museum staff. It will be launched on June 24, 2000 at 1300 hrs.
Bruce English, a member from Toronto, has come to his senses and is relocating to his own little piece of Heaven in Blue Rocks, Lunenburg. Welcome Bruce and Bev. Can’t wait to see you at the meetings and events.
Dave and Sherry Rimes’ Windsprint is well under way. No launch date yet but we’re looking forward to the party.
Howard and Donna Ray have completed one Volkskayak and have started the second. They found it too uncomfortable trying to double up in a single. You may remember that Howard and Donna bought Anne Kenney’s Windsprint in the hope of going after one of Peter Shortt’s amazing trophies at Mahone Bay. They’ll have a fight on their hands.
Robert Fraser has just acquired a 15’ catboat of unknown design for restoration. Maybe some company for Greg and Denise’s beautiful boats in D’Escousse.
Volkskayaks
in Mexico
by Gerry Gladwin
On Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, south from Cancun, about halfway to the state capital of Chetumal, is the Sian Ka'an Bioshpere Reserve.
Here is what Fodor's 96 says about it:
"The reserve includes the 1.3 million acre, Boca Paila ("Mouth of the River") peninsula, a secluded 35 km. strip of land established by the Mexican Government in 1986 as one of UNESCO's internationally protected areas and named A World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1987. The reserve constitutes 10% of the land in Quintana Roo and covers 100 km. of coast; its approximately 20 ruined sites are linked by a canal system - the only one of its kind in the Maya world"
Sounds like a very interesting place to go paddling.
For thousands of years these waterways were the highways of the area. Viewing a ruin from the same vantage point that a Mayan in a cayuca loaded with mangoes might have viewed the place a thousand years before - from water level; understanding that a Maya ruin is what remains of a place that has been left alone and forgotten and overgrown by vegetation for centuries; the remains of a people who figured out the stars, who built huge temples to keep their people occupied constructively, and who understood the concept of zero - making possible our own binary world. A civilization that rivaled or surpassed that of the ancient Egyptians in its complexity, that was in full decline years before being 'discovered' by Europeans - the result of too much deforestation and too much intensive agriculture required to feed their hugely successful population. As forest cover diminished the water table went down and fewer places were habitable by increasingly fewer people. Today, agriculture is once again growing while rainforests shrink but now drinking water in Quintana Roo is distributed by a subsidiary of Coca Cola so it is reliable...
The idea behind a VK workshop in Bacalar is to make it possible for people living in rural Quintana Roo to build their own boats to access the waters (small, human-powered boats are cheap transportation); to be able to offer low impact, guided paddling tours of the area with people who have lived there for a couple of thousand years already, thus stimulating small scale local economic development, while making it possible for visitors to appreciate the area for its unique climate, history and bio diversity.
Plywood from Chetumal, fiberglass tape from Nova Scotia, tools from China, epoxy from Belize and arrange a couple of places to work... over a period of 20 days... sounds relatively straight forward. As a result of this activity there are Volkskayaks and Volkskayak builders in Quintana Roo.
The participants were excellent. Eager to start, patient when things were difficult, and motivated to achieve. Having kayaks at all stages of construction make it clearer that something sloppy at this stage would lead to a lot of work later so, to clean it up while its still sticky might be a good idea - that sort of thing. It helps to be able to show something when your ability to explain is impaired by language. The best thing of all was watching them paddle the kayaks, standing up in one case, sprinting, cruising, dumping, re-entering and dumping again, finding out what the boats were like. Comparing them for speed with the clunky plastic kayaks.
Hearing their stories about the clear deep water up at the Rapido or about the upwelling of water from the cenote at the head of the creek, and seeing their eyes.
There are now twelve VOLKSKAYAKS in and around Bacalar at various stages of construction and a further six kits are cut out and ready to assemble, plus there are over a dozen local people who all have some experience building and some experience paddling.
Experience starts when you begin.
On Laguna de Bacalar the daytime wind is strong, the mangrove is thick, the Rapido is clear, the waters are seven colors of blue, and the creek transported me to another millennium where there might be a ruin around the next turn just under that vine that just moved and was noticed by the big log with eyes.
If
Only I had Remembered the Camera
or The Ghost
Stove of Cole Harbour
by Russ Parrott
Late last fall we decided to go for a quick paddle in Cole Harbour Marsh behind Rainbow Haven Beach. The wind had been somewhat gusty all morning, and by the time that we arrived at the beach a strong wind was blowing. The western side of the marsh was somewhat sheltered from the wind, so we decided to paddle along that shore. We parked close to the bridge near the Skeet shooting range and started to unload the Volkskayaks.
A couple of fellows were next to us with a pickup truck, a large aluminum boat on a trailer and a rather large and tall cast-iron kitchen stove in the back of the pickup. They launched the boat from the trailer, moved the trailer up the road, and then backed the truck down to the boat and started to unload the cast-iron kitchen stove from the back of the pickup to the boat. The stove didn’t fit between the seats in the boat, so a couple of wooden pallets were placed on top of the seats in the boat and the stove placed on the pallets.
Things had gone quite smoothly to this point – the guys looked like a couple of pros. With the stove safely loaded (but not tied down in any way), one of the fellows climbed into the back of the boat and started to get the outboard ready. The other fellow, pulled on his chest waders, and started to push the boat away from shore. This proved to be quite a task, due to the strong wind trying to push the boat back to shore, and the waves pounding against the hull.
The fellow in the boat found an oar and started to pole the boat away from the beach. The fellow with the waders stayed on the downwind side of the boat and pushed it further away from the shore, into deeper water. At this point we had unloaded the kayaks, and started to carry them down the beach, away from the intrepid boaters so that we did not see the exact sequence of the next chain of events. The fellow in the water was about belly-button deep in the water when we started away. We were just about to lay down the kayaks when there was a strong gust of wind followed by an awful racket – the sound of metal banging in combination with a long string of oaths.
We turned around to see that the fellow with the waders had succeeded in climbing into the boat from the down wind side. He and his buddy were both standing up in the boat but there was no sign of the stove. We saw that they were pointing at something in the water. They were looking at the kitchen stove which was now standing upright in the water, with the top inch or so visible between the waves. After a quick consultation with his friend, the fellow with the waders jumped back into the water and proceeded to drag the stove back to shore and up on the beach. They then loaded the stove back into the boat on top of the pallets and started the launch sequence again. This time they pushed the boat a short distance offshore, both climbed in while the boat was headed into the waves, poled the boat to deeper water, started the engine. They were both last seen doing about 25 knots headed to the far shore with the stove proudly mounted in the centre of the boat, on top of the pallets.
We never did see if they made it all the way – has anyone seen a large cast-iron kitchen stove in Cole Harbour Marsh ?
Winter
Cruising
by Greg Silver
Today I read Silver Donald's Easter weekend column 'The Most Glorious Beach in the World'. I think there is a parallel, perhaps, to your solicitation for stories on the theme of favorite places to cruise.
Silver Donald interviewed a number of people for his 'favorite beach' and discovered that most have three kinds of favorites; the favorite beach from childhood; their favorite beach in a 'patriotic' sense, as in... the best one in their community; and their 'ultimate' favorite... that would be the ideal, absolutely the best-in-the-universe perfect beach which you may only get to once in your life, or maybe only in your dreams.
So, I thought, one could write about favorite cruising places in this way. But my immediate reaction to your solicitation for stories is that my favorite place to 'cruise' - at least this past winter - has been my boat shed.
Visits to the shed serve some of the same purposes as cruising in the boat. For example, cruising I the shed enables me to escape any current reality, like what's going on in the house or office... or in the neighbor's shed. I had foreseen this as just one of many reasons to have a shed in the first place. And I built the shed with this in mind. But as it turns out I had no idea of what I was really getting into. It is quite possible to spend an entire day in there, without any specific goal in mind... and have a fulfilling, enlightening time. Some of my shed cruises are spent eyeing and planning the next improvements, as I do on my boats. In the case of the shed it's considering things like: overhead lighting; a truss-hung loft; an overhead crane; perhaps a lateral railway track and hoop system for moving boats sideways and rolling them. I've often thought about a concrete floor ( the compacted gravel is quaint but perhaps not as practical as I had hoped). I guess the shed I am cruising these days is one that I am patriotic about, as I have to live with it in my side yard and it has become kind of, well, dominant in the neighborhood. And it is a good landmark for visitors trying to find our place.
I never realized that the shed of my youth was really a shed until recently (40 years later). In the backyard of the house I grew up in, sat a building suitable for storing a small fleet of horse drawn carriages - apparently its original purpose. We called it the garage, but there was never a car in there that I can remember. My brothers and I would go in there and do much the same thing as I might do in my shed today. One year my uncle stored his bright finished planked cedar runabout in there and we privateers had a whale of a time sailing on the hard all winter. I recall one summer project in the 'garage' when we nailed 4 old lawnmower wheels and some superstructure details onto a lovely, sturdy, long thick board to make a go-cart. The design and construction project was fun - with full participation by all. Our cart didn't drive very well, but my younger siblings got lots of exercise pushing and scraping us older ones around the neighborhood. When Dad arrived home that night I recall that he was not too impressed with our work and mumbled something about that ##$%&* walnut plank he'd been storing for 10 years... I believe there was some discipline involved but I forgot the details.
As I'm just in from my evening shed cruise - trying out a new huge plumber's wrench by removing ancient seacocks from Queen Celeste - and feeling a bit tired from it, I'll sign off now, and leave the matter of the 'ultimate cruising shed' for another issue. Happy trails, wherever you may go.
We have been using the Adopt-a Meeting plan to get everyone involved and it worked very well.
September began with a meeting adopted by the Maggies travelers. October was the SWBANS fifth birthday party at our place. November found us at Robert Fraser’s in Eastern Passage for a display of some really cool boats. December we were back at the Museum where Greg , Denise and Keith and Pat Nelder showed a film and talked about Cat Boats. January was truly an Open House. Our first year to hold it at a real house and Dave and Sherry Rimes were our hosts. February was a show of aerial films of the NS Coastline hosted by Russ Parrott. March took us once again to John Little’s Blacksmith Shop and back to Andre and Olga’s home for a great lunch. In April we enjoyed a Model Boat display and talk by Michael Concannon.
When we started this I really didn't appreciate the full benefit of having members take responsibility for meetings. This has turned out to be the ideal way to add our personal touches on our Association. I have never before belonged to a group where so many members contribute so much. With your permission we'll continue with the Adopt-a-Meeting and circulate a schedule to be finalized at the AGM. Don't be shy...If you prefer a specific month let us know now and we'll book it.
Make sure you keep yourselves safe on the water.
Have Fun.
Annie
Today, Uniacke House viewed from the waters of the lake looks much as it would have looked in its' heyday when he first espied this fine property so far back in the woods. The lake, like the other 137,000 lakes, rivers and streams in Nova Scotia, offers a shoreline to experience, reflect and charge the batteries.
This summer marks the fiftth anniversary of the VOLKSKAYAK program. Hundreds of people have built themselves kayaks during workshops at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, in garages, in basements, and in backyards across the region. People have discovered the wealth of experience to be had from taking the initiative to build a boat and get out on the water.
On Sunday July 9th there will be a gathering of VOLKSKAYAKERS at Martha Lake in Mount Uniake. We invite all owner/builders as well as anyone who wants to take part in a paddle, a beach sweep, a picnic, and to have a gam. Meet at 11:00 at Uniake House.
A guided tour of Uniacke House to remind us of the history of the area; a walk through the grounds and along the woodland trails to give a feeling of what it might have been like before the days of super highways, super chargers, and supersonic airplanes.
On the grounds of the estate there is the skeleton of a right whale which has been weathering for the past three years in preparation for becoming part of a permanent exhibit at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History. While many of us have witnessed the presence of whales off the coast, it would be interesting to see a complete skeleton.
With any luck, at times the only sounds may be that of birdsong, waves on the shore, wind in the trees and, just maybe if you listen very carefully, the ghost of Richard Uniacke with a split bamboo fishing rod landing a dry fly over top of a hungry speckled trout.