Chine bLog

Unbeknown to me, there has been a blog companion to WoodenBoats's Getting Started in Boats series. It seems to be written now by Karen Wales, an associate editor at WoodenBoat. If this insert series is interesting to WoodenBoat readers, then the blog might be a useful tool to go along with it. It seems to have suffered a long hiatus until recently and I am hopeful that Ms. Wales is a new breath of fresh air to get it going again. Goodness knows, she has already had the great wisdom to point her readers to my series on building the Peace Canoe!.

So here is the situation: as I have mentioned I have a family with small children. I get to go out in my kayak sometimes, but if we had our own boat, I would get out much more because it can be a family activity. Rentals are possible, but leave things to chance (availability) and limit expeditions to a few places. There wasn't much interesting on Craig's List, and I was having a hard time thinking about adding ANOTHER non-wooden boat to the family fleet. Buying a wooden one was too expensive and I don't have the room to build one I'd really want. T'was a conundrum.

What I needed was to find a easily built boat - meaning I could pull it off over short period of time in my back yard - that didn't seem bland or non-functional. I admit this was a tall order - I am a bit snobby on this front. Well, fate began to intervene recently in the form of the recent two issues of Getting Started in Boats, WoodenBoat's companion publication. Volume 3 of this new publication came a couple months ago showing the Peace Canoe, a design by John Harris of Chesapeake Light Craft. I admit - again - I dismissed it as another boat that was great for getting people started building, but wasn't, ahem, a "real" boat (yes, I will get over myself at some point). Volume 4 the arrived recently, just as I was chewing on the dilemma above. I looked again. I studied it a bit more. I started to like its lines. Lo and behold, it fit the bill.