Low Entropy Boat Building

Entropy has generally had a lot of bad press.  Entropy is seen as something undesirable, as a general increase of disorder in the universe.  But, as people like Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine have been pointing out, order in the universe is created by burning energy and creating entropy.  You get a local decrease in entropy or increase in order and organization by a larger net increase in entropy.
So things like culture and technology arise from the burning of energy and the creation of entropy. So if more entropy also means more order and organization, why should we opt for low entropy boat building? That is, why should we do things like build skin boats instead of plastic roto-molded boats?  Interesting question, I think.  While hi-tech (high entropy) boat building produces some fabulous boats, lo-tech (low entropy) boat building is a hedge against energy scarcity.  That is, sometimes it is interesting to design boats for low energy scenarios, for environments where energy is scarce, or for some reason or other, you just don't want to use a lot of energy for esthetic reasons like you don't like the noise that high entropy machinery makes.

Why Aleuts don't build kayaks any more

Aleuts build kayaks up to about WWII and maybe a little after.  Today, the practice of building kayaks in the Aleutians has stopped.  There are many reasons why the building has stopped, but the primary one no doubt is economics - the kayak has become economically irrelevant in the lives of the Aleuts.  Other kinds of boats have replaced the kayak.  This becomes apparent when one spends any amount of time in an Aleut village like Sand Point.  The major activity nowadays is fishing and to make money at fishing in today's world one needs a commercial fishing boat, not a kayak. See evidence below.

There is also the fact that if you spend a good deal of time out on the water in your fishing boat, you are not likely to want to go out in a kayak in your spare time. But if you are working in Anchorage at a desk job, then maybe going out in a kayak on weekends might seem more attractive. 

What is possible, contd.

On our last day in Sand Point, we found some dry suits airing out on the railing of the motel we were staying at, the Anchor Inn. At first we thought they belonged to some kayakers, but in talking to the owners of the dry suits, we discovered that they belonged to some jet skiers who were using jet skis to travel from Seattle to Nome. The trip is apparently being financed by a cable TV network which will air a show on the trip sometime in 2012. Partial video below.

After talking to the jet skiers we went down to the harbor to look at their rigs.

Expedition logo

Here's the jet skis and Mike Livingston for scale.

Due to the general unavailability of gasoline en route, each ski had six extra 5 gallon tanks.  

 

 

After Sand Point, these guys were headed for King Cove and after that to False Pass where they would cross from the Pacific into the Bering Sea.
So OK, it's a stunt of sorts to travel from Seattle to Nome by jet ski.  For one thing, there aren't enough places to get gas. At one point, these guys had to get gas flown in to them, but other than that, doing the trip by jet ski isn't much different than traveling somewhere by motorcycle. 
So does this mean that we will now start seeing jet skis being used for long trips along our coasts, or to cross to Hawaii from LA?  Who knows.  It is possible no doubt long as you can get someone to bring them gas.

What is possible?

The current boat I am working on is yet another iteration of what I like to think of as my version of the perfect bay boat, bay kayak, that is.

One version of the bay boat, a canoe with outrigger for stability. However, too slow for long distances.

The perfect boat, for my current purposes at least is a boat that is fast enough to do a six mile bay crossing in a reasonable amount of time.  The boat also has to be car-toppable and be human powered, that is propelled by oars or paddles.  By reasonable amount of time, I mean that I want a boat that I can paddle at 4 mph.  Average speed will be less due to aimless drifting and beverage breaks, but if I can push the boat at 4 mph without making it an athletic event, then I will be happy. The boat also has to be reasonably stable, that is stable enough that I can stop and rest or take a photograph without having to do fancy bracing with the paddle or put another way, a boat that does not require my constant effort to keep it upright.

The outrigger canoe afloat.  On flat water, it is stable enough to stand up in.

Of course, speed and stability are conflicting requirements in a boat and so they need to be balanced for the proper compromise. The canoe with outrigger pictured above is not a proper bay boat because it is too slow. But it would make an ok fishing platform. In any case, I am sure that the boat I am currently working on will be a reasonable bay boat.
Which brings me to my main point, namely, what is possible?

San Francisco, six miles distant.

What I would like to do is periodically paddle over to San Francisco, in a boat that can do the trip in an hour and a half each way.  If it is summer and the trip over is started before 11, there will be little wind.  The trip back on the other hand will have lots of wind, although it will be a tail wind, 20 to 25mph being common. So if I start at home, drive to where my kayak is, launch it, that is half an hour added on to the 1.5 hour trip over for a total round trip of 4 hours.  If we add another hour for lounging about at the destination, perhaps to have a cup of coffee, then the whole trip will be about 5 hours.  If we add another hour for dallying along the way, then the total trip will turn into a 6 hour event, that is, 6 hours to go to San Francisco for a cup of coffee.
And once again, we have to ask ourselves, what is possible?  It isn't the physical constraints that make a paddle to San Francisco for a cup of coffee such a rare event.  It is more a matter of how much time it takes.  I can take a one hour paddle by launching off the boat ramp which is half a mile from my house. Total elapsed time for launching and landing is half an hour. So I could do a one hour paddle in 1-1/2 hours.
I do in fact do the short paddle near my house fairly often and the paddle to San Francisco only rarely.  What is possible in part has to do with how much time I allow myself for paddling.  When I think of the people whom I know that do more extensive paddles, they are invariably single people with few responsibilities other than to themselves.  So what is possible?  Perhaps what we allow ourselves.

Polynesian Boats in SF Bay

 There's a bunch of Polynesian boats that have just showed up in SF Bay this past week.  I went to visit them yesterday and here's some pictures I took.  Their website is http://www.pacificvoyagers.org/
The hulls of the boats are fiberglass and resin, but the decks and other topside trim is wood. 
The venture was financed by a German philanthropist including the building of the boats and all else that is involved, but the people on the boats are from the traditional canoe voyaging countries and it is great to see them undertaking such a voyage.  Apparently they have GPS on board, but it is used as backup -  navigators on board try to come up with the right course to sail which is then confirmed or corrected by the GPS.  

 Here's a part of the steering oar.  When under way, someone has to hang on to this.  It's about six inches in diameter and a hunk of wood, but balanced so the person steering isn't supporting all the weight.

the amazon book store

I notice I still have the Amazon book store banner up at the top of my page.  Some of my readers have software that blocks that sort of thing so they probably never even noticed in the first place.
In any case, the state of California is going to try to extract state sales tax from online vendors selling stuff in California.  They will approach Amazon and say, hey, how much have you sold in CA this year and how about handing over the sales tax.  Amazon is balking and one of the things they did is discontinue their program of paying a percentage of sales generated through links to people who live in California.  So if you do click on one of the book links I have put up and buy a book from Amazon, I no longer get a percentage.  Still, I may keep the book store up there because it's a convenient place to list books that I have found interesting or useful.
But discontinuing the commission program seems like a bad idea.  Perhaps Amazon was hoping that people like myself who have made a buck fifty in the past year will write impassioned letters to their legislators.  Probably won't happen.  It's probably good for Amazon to pay taxes.  We buyers will pay more for our stuff, but on the other hand,  Amazon will have less of an unfair advantage over local retailers. And California won't have to lay off so many teachers and librarians. 

Sand Point bent wood hats

Here's a few photos of bent wood hats made in Sand Point.  Bent wood hat instructor for the camp was Peter Devine.  He had inherited some of the bending jigs made by Andrew Gronholdt who was one of the key people who revived the art of Aleut bent wood hat making. For more on Andrew Gronholdt, see the wikipedia page.

 This is a selection of Peter's designs.

 This is a bending jig for short visors made by Andrew Gronholdt.

 Peter was also experimenting with using baleen as hat making material.  The source of this baleen was apparently a minke whale that had washed up on the beach. Although the baleen is dark, the frayed fibrous edges are essentially blond.

 A student adding feathers to a short visor he had made.

 Hats are carved from quarter inch thick cotton wood which is thinned out in selected places for easier bending.  After the hat blanks are carved, they are soaked in boiling water and then bent on a form.  Stones hold the hat blanks under water.  The smooth stones were found by Peter in the stomach of a sea lion.  The darker rough stones are from Atka.

And finally, a student wearing one of his finished hats next to the finished iqyax^ (Unangan kayak.)

Aleutian China

 Sand Point has one restaurant and two cafes, both of which seem to be closed more than open, at least when we needed them.  Above, the sign for the Aleutian China, which you might guess serves Chinese food.  Throughout the week we were fed our three squares at culture camp, but on weekends, that is Saturday and Sunday we were off and had to fend for ourselves, so our choice was primarily, the Aleutian China.  I was prepared for the worst, but the cooking at the Aleutian China was actually pretty good.  I have tasted worse here in the SF bay area. 

 The Aleutian China is locatated in the same building as the AC Value Center. The AC Value Center is both a super market, check cashing center and general merchandise emporium.

This sign here indicates that the Aleutian China is open for business.

Here is John sucking down a milk shake for desert.

And finally, a view of Unga Island out the window.

Sand Point, Alaska

 I've just gotten back from Sand Point Alaska where I spent the last two weeks at the Sand Point Culture Camp.  I had hoped over the period of the last month to post dispatches from both the Urban Unagax^ Culture Camp in Anchorage and the culture camp in Sand Point, but in both places, days were long and the internet connections were problematic, so that the dispatches just didn't happen.  So here they are, retroactively.  I should mention that I traveled to Sand Point together with Mike Livingston and John Petersen.  Mike was the person instrumental in getting John and myself to Sand Point.  John is a fellow kayak builder and he and I built an Unangan kayak.  Mike taught model kayak building.
Photo above is one of many views of Sand Point in the foreground and Unga Island in the background. Unga Island is considerably larger than Popov Island where Sand Point, town of roughly 900 people is located.  Unga was probably more important as an Aleut living place before the arrival of the Russians, but today, Unga is uninhabited. 

 Weather for the first week was mostly cloudy with frequent rain and only intermittent sunshine.  Temps were in the fifties.  On this, a fairly typical day, the clouds thinned a little around 9 pm when these pictures were taken and the sun poked through to dramatically light up selected portions of the landscape.  Looks lovely of course and is somewhat cheering after a full day of low hanging clouds and persistent gloom.

 

Here's another view of town from a sea-level vantage point.  Shortly after taking this picture, a woman came out of a nearby house and we talked to her for a while.  Turned out she knew me.  We had met in Akutan a few years ago.  Then she went back in her house and brought out some smoked salmon for us to take with us.

Here's John with his smoked salmon in front of a portable smoke house.  I don't know exactly how this smoke house works or why it is on wheels or what the function of those racks on the side of the house are, but the discoloration to the left and top of the door are a pretty good indicator that smoke leaked out the door at some point. 
So that's it for today.  Much more to come soon.  Like a report on the boat building, the launch, a hike on the island, fishing and more.

2011 Urban Unangax^ Culture Camp in Anchorage - Update

Just a few photos from this year's culture camp.  Just finished up yesterday.  Days have been long.  9 am to 9 pm. Trying to catch up on sleep now.

 Working backwards here from the last day.  Potluck at lunch time.  Clockwise from left - smoked salmon, stewed seal, dried salmon, berries in seal oil, pasta salad, lettuce salad, salmon pie, potato salad.

 Here's how you eat dried salmon, sort of.  Normally, you dip it in seal oil, but lacking seal oil, you make a sort of a layer cake of seal, seal fat and salmon.

 Meanwhile, back at the kayak shop, kids pretending that they're in kayak jail.

 The very youngest kids did not participate in the kayak building but got a tour of our progress.  Here they are demonstrating the light weight of the kayak by lifting it up.

And then we took all the kayaks out to the Alaska Native Heritage center where the Orthodox priest blessed them with holy water.
More to come

More Boat Strength

I got my copy of Boat Strength in the mail.  Gosh, it's hardcover.  Editing has gotten looser than it used to be.  In cursory reading I found two mistakes.  Nothing fatal. Stuff like a missing hyphen when a word is broken at the end of a line and continued on the next.  Still, it indicates that other errors could lurk in places where it matters.  I'm nitpicking here.  15 years ago when I last had to deal with a publisher, the guy who was editing my book, The Aleutian Kayak was telling me how the publisher wanted them to edit more books every year.  Ideally, from the publisher's standpoint, editors could be replaced by computers. I think the publishers are now trying to publish books with minimum human input other than that of the writer and it's starting to show.
On to substantive matters.
As I suspected, kayak builders can dispense with a book like this, but if you want to build anything more ambitious than a kayak, this book might be of help.  Wooden boat building gets about a hundred pages.  Fiberglass, steel and aluminum gets the rest.  I suppose that if you wanted to build a kayak in steel plate, you might find some useful info in the metals section.  But the books has various nuggets of useful info, like what kinds of aluminum alloys can withstand salt water, in case you want to build a George Dyson Aluminum frame type kayak.

There are other nuggets of wisdom in this book, like the tradeoffs between weight and strength and cost of various materials.  For instance, aluminum is not as strong as steel, but is lighter so the strength of steel can be had by using thicker aluminum and total weight will still be less.  But then aluminum costs a lot more than steel and the savings in weight come at a cost of more money.  Nothing comes for free after all.
So, as I suspected, not a must have for kayak builders but a good addition for the library of someone with higher ambitions or a simple love of boat building knowledge.

Strength of Materials

I just ordered a copy of this book and hope to report on it in more detail later.  I have read most of Dave Gerr's other book, The Nature of Boats and found that one helpful.  So I'm hoping that this one will be as well. 
Dave Gerr is a professional boat designer and explains the major issues that a boat designer has to deal with in easy to understand terms in the Nature of Boats. In this particular book, he gets into the details of how strong you have to make boat parts so the boat doesn't break.
Strength isn't much of an issue for kayak builders.  Long as you follow traditional guidelines the boats will be strong enough.  Most of the time, most kayak builders that I know want to make their boats as light as possible for ease of transport.  You can push that envelope all you want.  If a boat breaks, it's no big deal for the most part since you didn't put much money into it in the first place and with a skin on frame boat, breakage of frame parts is seldom catastrophic or life threatening. 
Not so if you build bigger boats.  More money is at stake and maybe lives and cargo and professional reputations, so it behooves the big boat builder to have some notion of how strong is strong enough. 
The book will soon be on its way and I will report on  whether any of the material in it will benefit the average skin on frame kayak builder.

Don't Let Others Plan Your Future

I've been reading the latest article at Low-tech Magazine. I read that kind of stuff because skin of frame technology is relatively low-tech and I'm always curious what other sorts of low tech activities people are attracted to. 
So, having explained that, let me get on to my main point which is other people's conception of what the future will be like and how to plan for it.
Low-tech mag imagines a post-carbon future, one where cheap carbon fuels will not be available. Whether you believe that a low carbon future is imminent or not is more or less irrelevant.  The point of low tech mag is to imagine how we would deal with it.  We can join in on that exercise whether we believe in a low carbon future or a future of ever increasing bounty.

So getting back to the magazine, their latest article focuses on bicycle powered gadgetry, like this bicycle-powered grinder.  Not a bad idea, really, assuming that in the imaginary carbon-less future you will have access to all the component parts you will need to realize this low-tech vision.
Now on to the scary part of this particular low-tech vision, using bicycle power to generate electricity.  This vision isn't scary in and of itself. Using one bicycle to generate electricity isn't all that bad.  I used to have a bike with a headlight that ran off a generator.  It made pedaling harder, but you didn't have to replace any batteries. 

Someone has imagined what looks to me something like the slave-galley of cartoons, rows and rows of haggard men in chains pedaling away for hours a day to generate electricity for someone else.  Here is the statement from the people who envisioned this scheme:
"electricity could be generated in large pedal powered electricity plants, and then distributed to houses, shops, public spaces and factories. This is more efficient than doing it in each house separately because you can do away with the batteries and still offer electricity 24 hours a day. Power plants would simply add more pedallers when demand is high (such as during peaks hours) and send them home when demand is low (at night, for instance)."
And who the hell would want to work at this job? Certainly not the guy who thought of it.  Imagine what your butt would look like after 8 or twelve hours of sitting on one of those milk crates.  Thank you, no.  I would rather have a post-carbon future without electricity if this is what it takes.

Wooden Boat Building Books

I've listed a whole bunch of wooden boat building books in my Amazon book store. Not that I'm interested in traditional wooden boat building all that much.  Traditional wooden boats weigh too much.  You either need storage on the water or a boat trailer and trailer storage to own one of these boats. 
But traditional wooden boats were powered by human power or wind and therefore had to be efficient and will potentially lend themselves to skin on frame construction by which almost any small boat can be made to come in under 100 pounds.
So, traditional wooden boat designs lend themselves to building in skin on frame.  There are certain limitations which you have to overcome or simply avoid, but since wooden boats were built by bending wood over a framework, the shapes of wooden boats are possible to emulate in sof.  You won't find any curves on a traditional wooden boat that can't be copied in skin. In addition to giving you plans of wooden boats, these wooden boat books also give you advice on what sort of environments these boats might be good for.
Maybe I'm a little too optimistic on the topic of adapting wooden boat designs to skin on frame, having only built three sof boats that were based on wooden originals and two of them boats with bark for skin instead of wooden planking, but still, I think the idea is a good one.
Only one major caveat needs to be mentioned.  Being lighter, an sof boat will sit higher in the water and have less momentum than its wooden skinned original, something you might have to correct with ballast.  But heck, as Pete Culler once wrote, experience begins when you start building.

Native Art at the Alaska Native Medical Center

The largest assemblage of contemporary Alaskan Native Arts and Crafts that I've seen is not at any museum but at  the Alaska Native Medical Center, ANMC. If you go there, find the elevator. Take it to the top floor of the center, then look for the stairwell.  Walk down and you will find displays in the stairwell as well as on every floor.  Lots of wonderful stuff. Everything from model sleds to dolls to beadwork to ivory walruses.  And there's a gift shop.  You should check for hours if you actually intend to buy something. According to a friend, their prices are considerably better than commercial galleries.  Not cheap by any means - This isn't 1930 but good values are to be had and the stuff is top quality, no painted rocks or spirit catchers.

2011 Urban Unangax^ Culture Camp in Anchorage

Should you find yourself in Anchorage during the week of July 7-13 stop by the Urban Unangax^ Culture Camp at the APIA headquarters.  Lots of stuff going on, including Mike Livingston, John Petersen and myself building traditional kayaks. Don't stop by on Sunday because nobody will be there. But any weekday or Saturday we'll be there.

Check out the video for an overview of the doin's.
Check out the APIA Web site for more info on the APIA.
The APIA headquarters is at 1131 East International Airport Rd.
Anchorage Alaska 99518

Deep Thought

I created a subject category in my Amazon book store called "Deep Thought." I thought it might be worth explaining what I mean by Deep Thought. 
First off, I should disclose that Deep Thought, (deep thought from now on - I hate typing upper case) is not my concept.  One of the news sites that I follow occasionally groups various articles under that category. 
What is now called deep thought is what used to be called thought.  But with the advent of the internet and infotainment, what passes for thought has degraded to a melange of received wisdom, prejudice, rants and simple running of the mouth. And so, legitimate thinking of any kind had to be promoted to deep thought.  Well, OK, I'll play along.
So why would a kayak builder need deep thought?  Well, it comes up for me whenever I feel the need to justify the building of kayaks with traditional technology.  Why, my detractors ask, would you restrict yourself to building kayaks, an outmoded form of technology with more outmoded technology?  The true answer, "because it appeals to me," isn't particularly satisfying to most people.  So I feel compelled to explain in terms of some sort ideas that they can relate to. Or at least, I can try to snow them with so much academic falderal that they go away quietly.

The question of why use one type of technology rather than another is one that intrigues me.  And it's one that leads me to thermodynamics and complexity a subject covered by Ilya Prigogine in his books. I'll get back to this topic in some future post.  Since it requires thinking rather than just typing, it may be a while till I get to it.

Then I have also listed Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac under Deep Thought, not so much for the deep thinking as for sentimental reasons because Aldo Leopold's cabin was near an island in the Wisconsin River where I spent a good number of summer weekends camping and swimming and fishing.  I have read the book, but it was a while ago and I can't remember any deep thoughts from it.  Will have to try again.

Finally, more deep thinking by a man named Rod Swenson. Rod has published a number of articles, some available HERE that answered some nagging questions I had about thermodynamics, specifically entropy which is all about a trend away from order and life, technology and culture which are trends toward order.  This again relates to the topic of technology and what makes one kind of technology better or more successful than another.  I will get back to this topic as well, but here's a quick teaser:  The deciding factor of which technology wins at any given moment according to Swenson is the law of maximum entropy production.  The winning technology at any given moment is the one that most quickly uses up available energy in a given environment.  Again, more on this at a future time.  And in case you're wondering, is skin on frame building technology the one that best burns available energy?  The answer is no.  But I think it's more complex than that, so stay tuned.

Further Kayak Musings

In the process of selecting books for my Amazon sub store on this blog, it became apparent to me that I wasn't picking any stitch and glue or strip building books.  It became apparent to me that I have no interest in that sort of thing.  What I like about skin on frame building is its spontaneity.  Want a wider boat? Pry the gunwales apart with a longer stick, and so on all along the way.  You make changes on the fly.  Strip and stitch and glue seem to take more planning and forethought.  Not a bad idea to decide what you want to build before building it, but for a guy like me who has no real schooling in boat theory and hydrodynamics, the seat of the pants approach is more appealing.  There is also an excess of epoxy and fiberglass and sanding involved in strip and stitch and glue building, at least for my taste.  I'll leave these things for others. 

Skinboat Journal Store

I've added an Amazon.com store to my blog.  It's a subset of stuff that Amazon sells.  For now it's mostly books about kayaking and boat building that I have read and found to be useful.  I intend to add tools and other kayak related hardware.  Stay tuned.  If you buy something from Amazon by way of my store, I get a small percentage.  Ha. Not quite enough to retire on I'm sure. 

The only downside to this scheme is that I can't add my own review for store items except directly on the Amazon site.  So you get to see my opinion on an item along with all the others.  The reason I mention this is that for the most part, I only list things that I recommend but in some cases, I list things as examples of stuff you should steer away from.  So if an item falls into the steer away from category, I would like to have some way to alert you to that fact.  Maybe I'll create a steer away from sub category.

unimak.us

A new website called Unimak Area has been erected. Lots of info on the Eastern Aleutian region. Enjoy.