I have paddled a 17ft. cedar chestnut and a fiberglass chestnut canoe since 1974. Truly a marvelous canoe built in Peterbourough Ont. The canoe line, including freighter canoes were once a big part of Hudson Bay Canada store merchandise and the canoe celebrates quite a history I am told. Today, they fetch as much as $5000.00 Canadian for a used one. Many were sold to the North Country and were reveared to be one of the best canoes ever built. With the advent of the snowmobile purchased their sales to the Dene, Inuit and trappers ect. declined drastically. The company went out of business around 1979 I believe. The cedar canvas was my favorite and enjoyed a 1000 of miles of rivers and BC lakes. I truly loved it. And now? I am boatless! For a little while longer. It would be appropriate to brag, but I have no bragging rights as of yet. so I can't. Not yet. But soon! In the mean time, I'll just keep building until it is finished. I am in the midst of building a George Dyson Baidarka with 6061-T6 Aluminum tubing, and 15 oz Ballistic Nylon skin coated with neoprene and hypalon. Thanks goes out to John Winters, Bill Low, Peter Carter, Alex Ferguson, Kirk Olsen, Wolfgang Brink, Tom Clark, Chris Young, Garry Rose and oh yes George Dyson for all the help and advice I have received from these truly wonderful, helpful people. They have been a real blessing to me in reconfiguring the design of George's Dyson's already famous 17.32 ft. single Baidarka. A special thanks goes to John Winters for having run the boats lines for me through his computer and for a whole lot of yaking over the net whenever questions came up. I have increased her length to 18ft. 4inchs. Her beam is 22.75 inches and her depth is 10.25 inches The bow is an upturned bifercated hull. Already reputed to be very fast and stable I have gained an even faster boat according to my experts and one that is more capacious for cruising. It is being fitted for a sail, and will have adaptability to use either a tab rudder and/or a longer foil rudder for down wind sailing purposes and to accomodate rougher waters. where I will be able to choose the rudder style for expected conditions. I will be installing a battery operated electric bilge pump with a solor panel (for charging) on rear deck, much like the Australians. My seat may be either a foam carved one or I will go with a self constructed bean bag seat with a soft foam layer fabric over top. I will also have a sea sock. I am constructing this eleven stories up in my apartment overlooking the Saskatchewan River. I hauled 200 ft. of tubing up the side of the building wall to my balcony and brought it inside to lay out along the north wall where I have my building jig sitting on a pair of iron work horse stands. Over 1300 holes are to be soon finished drilling. Holsclaw benders were recently appropriated and the tube bending should be finished in a weekend. The frame will come together fairly quickly so I can then start lashing with nylon and then epoxy coating the lashing. Following that, I will install Alex Ferguson's design ideas for rudder foot pedals, then the skin is to be sewen on. I am having a sewing party at that point to speed things up. Once complete [estimated completion date= June 10th] I will be lowering the baidarka to the ground and taking it to where I can safely coat it with some air quality control {xylene fumes/neoprene/hypalon}. My daughter is sewing my sail based on Dyson's fan design so to expedite completion. Yes, a photo record of this marvelous project is being maintained. Nuts for doing this? No just demined to have my way. Internal floatation bags built in. No it will not have sponsons! They are a marvelously stable craft to begin with. This craft has been three years in the making and I am delighted that its birth is not much further away. The biggest delays for me involved rounding up all the tools and having larger blocks of time to focus on construction. However, the research I gained and the stuff I learned from so many has been simply invaluable. Wow, you are some marvelous folk out there! Wayne stephens thinks that I will finish before he gets his done. Hope he is right. MadPoodle stands a chance to take me fishing next year if the tornados don't get him first or he gets hit by a hockey puck. %^) I expect to join with Sylvio Lamarch as sometime in July after he gets back from his paddling in VietNam to do some paddling in the Kootneys and then some island paddling somewhere in the Georgian Strait off Vancouver Island and Bellingham is a certain destination thats for sure. Got to show the wares off to George and maybe get him to try out a streched version. This is such a cool kayak! Cheers, Philip P/S Jackie, you can hold me accountable for my completion date! *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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