Just a quick note to call out another skin-on-frame resource: The Berkshire Boat Building School. They seem to build a couple nice-looking canoes and rowing boats and offer kits and classes. Worth checking out further.
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 Posted on October 14th, 2009 Posted on April 13th, 2009The second highlight of our recent revisit to the National Museum of the American Indian began as we entered the grounds. I looked up and saw a series fo decorated canoe paddles in an upper-story window. “Must get to that spot” I thought.
Here’s some more. » Continue reading More new stuff at the National Museum of the American Indian » Posted on April 12th, 2009OK, call me thick if you will, but I had never noticed a cool feature of the National Museum of the American Indian here in Washington, DC. As I have mentioned before in a few posts, there as a small, but spectacular, collection of four native craft displayed in the main foyer of the museum: an Inuit skin-on-frame kayak (using modern skin), an Ojibwe bark canoe, a Bolivian reed boat, and a Hawaiian outrigger canoe. The foyer is a cool, multistory affair with each floor open to it. I finally looked down from the top floor and, with help of the sign right there (I’m good like that), saw that the boats are not randomly arranged. It’s clear looking down from above: the kayak is in the North, the canoe to the East, the reed boat to the South, and the outrigger to the West. Clever! Makes the whole display that much more worth viewing.
Posted on March 8th, 2009Call it a two-fer. I have been doing the Apprentice for a Day program at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. I thought my Dad would enjoy it as well, I gave him a day of it for Christmas. Of course I had to join him. So he got to check it out, I scratched my boatbuilding itch, and we got some father-son bonding time in. Hey – that’s a three-fer! The mission – and of course we chose to accept it – was building a 13′ 3″ Melonseed skiff, based on lines taken from a 1920’s craft, the oldest surviving one of its type. Specifically, the task for the day was beginning to install the ribs. We were both thrilled as neither of us had done that before. I’ll not carry on – check out the images. Posted on March 5th, 2009
Posted on February 25th, 2009Our friends over at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum have been busy. They have launched two new blogs to highlight the activity on their working waterfront. The Apprentice for a Day blog highlights that program, in which we at Chine bLog have been proud and happy participants. There are some pictures of the building, but mostly there are detailed descriptions of class activities, such as this one on planking a Melonseed skiff. Apprentice for a Day (AFAD) director Dan Sutherland has some deep knowledge to share and there are good nuggets in here. You can then hop over to the On the Railway blog for happenings with the museum’s fleet of historic working watercraft. Boatyard director Marc Barto and his crew keep 100+ year-old boats, many of them big, solid boats with a ton of hard work on their timbers, available for ongoing appreciation. After looking at the small AFAD boats, the scale of these working craft is daunting. Great to have these new blogs available! Posted on December 16th, 2008I was able to get in a quick peek at the National Museum of the American Indian, which keeps a few traditional boats in its rotunda. I have written about the semi-traditional Inuit kayak before, but I didn’t have a shot of the completed boat. Here she is.
The boat is pretty and definitely fits within its tradition, but clearly comes off as a modern replica. Its skin is a bright white, very light-weight nylon. Many modern skin-on-frames use ballistic nylon that, when varnished, looks at least vaguely like a true skin. This one definitely does not.
For a boat that is closer to a true traditional version of itself, I present this beauty: an Ojibwe birch bark canoe. Check out the detailed shots in the extended entry. There is some really interesting detail on this boat.
The other boats there, by the way, are a Hawaiian outrigger canoe and Bolivian reed boat, both of which I have written about in the past. Posted on November 29th, 2008
I was pleased to see that American Rivers has a new blog, Blue Trails Guide, focused on helping communities make better recreational use of their waterways. Rock on, folks! Category: 6. Organizations & Education |
 Tags: american rivers |
 Leave a comment |  Trackback this Post Posted on October 6th, 2008
I have mentioned the presence of one of Iain Oughtred’s Caledonia Yawls at the festival. I had previously only seen the design in pictures and it was a thrill to get a up-close-and-personal with the boat, one of my favorite designs. This one is REBECCA ANN, built by Geoff Kerr in 2002 and owned by Dale Davenport of Linville, VA. Some observations:
If interested, the web site The Caledonia Yawl Crazybird has Dale’s story of coming to own the boat, as well as his and other cruising stories. Posted on October 6th, 2008
The Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival is pretty contained, but there are a number of boats to see, so it took me a bit before I wandered over to the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association tent. This seems like a cool organization. They had a few well-restored cedar-and-canvas canoes there, including this one. Pretty boat – someone took care on this one – it looks like there is a substantial amount of original wood in her. She looks nice on the water as well… |
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Without much trouble we found them in a resource area. Through a program called the 
This is a boat you could load up and go somewhere with a few people. She could take you into shallow-draft waters and out across some open water.
Their site has a 
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