CHAPTER
IV.
CANOE FITTINGS
THE
DAY of sail canoeing
seems to have gone out of vogue of late, giving place
to the light, open Indian type of canoe. Time was when
one could go to the far ends of the earth in the
canvas-covered cruising canoe or its heavier wooden
counterpart, though I always preferred the former. I
see no good reason for this change, and hope that
these chapters on the canvas cruiser will do something
to revive a most interesting type of long-distance
canoeing. As a matter of fact you can build a very
serviceable canvas canoe with spruce and ash framing
and ten-ounce duck skin which will not weigh over
thirty-five pounds.
Nessmuk, who navigated in the lightest wooden
canoes in the world, weighing but 11 lbs., seemed to
think that canvas canoes gained in weight with age and
were limp, logy, and non-floating when awash. As a
matter of fact he spoke from hearsay on this matter
and never gave the canvas canoe a chance. Far from
being logy it is as taut and spruce a craft as floats,
lively and safe in seaways that would have held
Nessmuk's ten-foot open canoe helplessly wind-bound,
and, if you upset, which may happen if some accident
like a jamming rudder befalls you, she will fill to
the brim and yet carry your weight nicely, while you
kick her ashore, or, if the seas are not too choppy,
you can bail her out from the water alongside, crawl
in over the stern and go your ways rejoicing. I have
done both and I know. And she is the only solution of
the mosquito problem in a cruise along the great
Atlantic bays, such as the one to Currituck Sound and
back via inside route from New York. For the canvas
cruising canoe is the one impervious sleeping resort
where marsh mosquitoes abound. Its tent is virtually a
little rectangular house over the cockpit, and is
provided with a mosquito blind inside the flap. When
you retire for the night, not only is the tent
buttoned firmly to the cockpit all around, but the
bottom edge of the mosquito bar is also. You gather a
few armfuls of sage for bedding, strew them in the
bottom of the canoe, pile sand around her as she lies
up the beach, step in the two masts and guy the tent
between them, leading out to pegs on the beach, and
the ravenous horde of stingarees outside can sample
the tent or the canvas deck, or the canoe bottom, to
their heart's content for all you care.
In making a canoe tent, ordinary sober whites and
drabs seem out of keeping with such a gay bird as the
canoe has been proving herself to be all day long. I
always prefer something loud in awning effects, broad,
noisy stripes that are blatantly aggressive on the
color scheme of the surrounding scenery. These stripes
should go vertically, and four feet high is plenty.
The tent should be just the length and width of your
cockpit, which will be about 2 feet wide by 6 feet
long. To make it, sew two strips of yard-wide awning
duck together, hemming across the ends. This piece
will give you both sides and the top. Get out two more
strips a little over two feet wide and five inches
longer than the height of the tent. Hem at the bottom
and sew to the other piece of canvas, making the ends
of the tent. Each of these ends will now have two
five-inch flaps sticking up above the tent top.
Get two spreaders (stout sticks, like broom
handles) and sew these flaps around them, sewing the
leftover edge inside the top of the tent at the ends
with a double seam. Run in two bolt ropes of 1/8-inch
white cotton rope inside the tent from one stick to
the other, and sew it to the canvas every foot, or
overstitch it to it all along its length. Bend on a
bridle to each of the sticks and put in grommets every
foot along the bottom of the tent.
To set up :--Run the canoe up on the beach, pile
sand around her, step the main and mizzen masts
furled, lead out guy ropes for bridles of the fore and
aft spreader sticks of the tent and guy to pegs in the
sand. Use the main and mizzen sheets for side guys.
Along the outside of your cockpit should be a row of
brass awning buttons or hooks, which you can get from
any ship chandlery, and you now snap the grommets over
these hooks and the tent is up. For doors you simply
leave about three feet of the middle seam on each side
unsewed, and sew to the edges of the flap thus formed
a loose fold of green mosquito netting of the strong
linen kind, that they use for salt water mosquito
bars.
This arrangement allows you to pin back one flap
and get the air, the opening being covered by the
mosquito bar. As the rest of the canoe is mosquito
proof this bar will ensure you a good night's sleep,
no matter how mosquitoey the country, and in the day
time along its Atlantic marshes the mosquitoes are
generally at peace with the world. The canoe tent is
good and comfortable for midsummer camping, and is
insect and snake-proof, besides giving the maximum of
comfort with the least browse, since its circular
shape goes in very well with the contours of one's
body. I have slept in them for weeks, and have even
tried it off shore at anchor, but this is apt to end
rather moistly as you never know, when you drift off
to sleep, what the weather is going to do during the
night.
Nessmuk's "pudding stick" or auxiliary paddle I
have tried and found good. Get a piece of 7/8-inch by
4-inch clear spruce about two feet long, and whittle
from it a miniature paddle with a seven-inch blade 4
inches wide. Tie it to a rib of the canoe with a bit
of twine so you can drop it any time. It is very
useful when working up salt creeks after rail, snipe
or reed birds. Hold the shotgun in one hand and
maneuver her along with the pudding-stick in the
other. If a shot offers, drop the stick alongside
while you attend to fresh fowl for the larder.
A 3-1/2- or 4-pound folding galvanized anchor,
costing about $1.50, is a necessity; also a small bow
chock on each side of the stem, as there will come
times when you will simply have to lie to, when
paddling is impossible against head seas. You can't do
anything with her without the bow chocks unless you
perform the delicate maneuver of crawling out and
tying your anchor line to the stem ring. The anchor is
also handy for fishing or resting for lunch in the
middle of a long traverse.
I do not advise a folding centerboard for a canvas
canoe. They are a necessity on the larger wooden
cruising canoes, but the little fellow is easy to keep
on a level keel and is in fact a boy's paradise in all
kinds of blows, so that a good 2-1/2 inch or 3-inch
yellow pine keel the entire length of the canoe will
keep her from making leeway quite as well as anything
of a folding nature. Besides, the smallest of these
made is 24 inches long and requires about three inches
of flat keel to screw to. A good brass drop rudder is,
however, a luxury not to be despised. You can buy
these at more or less fancy prices, compared to the
cost of building the canoe (about the same money), but
you can make one for less than a dollar.
Get a piece of half-inch brass pipe 16 inches long
and slot its lower end with a hacksaw. Spread the slot
to pass a 1/16-inch brass rudder plate. Cut this out
in the conventional round-end rudder shape, 8 inches
long by approximately six inches broad.
Pin near bottom with 1/4-inch brass bolt. Drill two
3/16-inch holes in the back of the pipe to receive the
rudder hangers, which are stout brass awning hooks
screwed into the stern-post and left upside down. They
have just the right slope to allow the rudder to be
easily shipped. Finish the rudder by filing a flat at
the top to receive the yoke, which should have an eye
in the bottom to pass the twine for lowering and
raising the rudder.
The only other hardware you will need is a jam
cleat for the rudder line, two for the main sheet
inside the cockpit, and one on the bow deck for the
anchor. Halyard cleats are best on deck screwed to the
main deck carline. So equipped you will find a canvas
canoe trip one of the most enjoyable cruises you ever
undertook.
I propose to add here a footnote on centerboards
which has been several years in the making. Leeboards
are objectionable as being clumsy and landlubberly; I
have always preferred a fixed keel. This latter will,
however, not do much towards minimizing your leeward
drift when sailing closehauled, so I have schemed much
for some sort of canoe centerboard for canvas sail
canoes. Of course the first thing to be investigated
was the folding metal fan centerboard, used on wooden
sailing canoes. These run from 24 to 40 inches long
and, even in galvanized iron cost $8, or more than the
cost of the canoe; but that is not its worst defect.
The width of three or more inches required by the base
of the folding centerboard trunk puts it out of the
question for attaching to a 7/8-inch keelson.
If I were building a larger Waterat of, say,
17 feet LWL, intended mainly for sailing purposes, I
would make the keel of 5 inch stock, fining down to 1
inch at stem and stern and riveting my ribs across it
inside. With this keel there would be plenty of room
to screw down the trunk of the folding board, and I am
sure that such a cruiser for two men in salt water or
lake country would be nearly ideal, for she could
carry a lot of sail, would be much lighter than the
wooden cruising canoe, and therefore paddle more
easily, and it was the bugbear of this tedious and
laborious paddling that eventually led to the downfall
of the popularity of the wooden sailing canoe.
My cogitations on centerboards for the Waterats, as
built, led to the design of a thin wooden trunk of
shape to take a 12 x 36 x 1/8-inch brass dagger
centerboard. This was to be lined inside with canvas,
the lips of which were to be brought out and tacked
over the canvas on the keel, thus making a watertight
canvas surface inside the trunk, for it is obvious
that a plain wooden trunk would surely leak because of
the joint between keelson and keel which cannot be got
at to caulk. By lining the trunk with canvas this
difficulty is obviated.
To construct such a board, cut a slot through keel,
keelson and ridge timber of upper forward deck 3/8 x
12 inches. Let in two uprights of 1/2 x 1-inch oak,
necked down to 3/8 inch where they pass through keel
and upper ridge timber, and screw these into place at
each end of the slots, setting the joint in white lead
paste. Now screw to each side of these uprights the
sideboards of the trunk, with their canvas inside
facings already stuck fast on them by painting down
with several coats of paint. These facings should have
about three inches of free canvas along their lower
edges, which canvas is pulled down through the slot in
keel and keelson and brought around outside the canoe,
where they are pulled smooth and flat and tacked
outside the main canvas skin of the canoe with copper
tacks set close together and liberally doped with
white lead paste.
This construction will give you a watertight,
canvas-lined centerboard trunk suitable for a narrow
dagger-type centerboard of 1/8-inch brass with a
wooden stop or top, which board is to be shoved down
through the slot in the upper forward deck, which is
the upper end of your trunk.
The above design is easily put in while building
the canoe, and, even for a built one, simply involves
taking off the forward upper deck so as to get at the
work.
As Waterat IV was wanted up at the June
encampment of the Camp Fire Club and I was too busy to
attempt any extensive work on the canoe that year, I
built on her a detachable keel board, put on and taken
off with wing nuts like a set of leeboards, as we used
to do with keel rowboats. All you needed was a piece
of 8 x 7/8 inch yellow pine about three feet long, and
two 1/4-inch carriage bolts 2-1/2 inches long with
wing nuts. It did not take half an hour to put this
scheme into execution. I sawed a slant fore and aft on
the keel board, so that in running aground or striking
anything submerged I would not be brought up all
standing and have something ripped loose.
Two carriage bolts were driven through, about eight
inches from either end of the keel board; the holes
for them were marked on the 2-1/2-inch keel (which,
you will remember, is permanently secured to the
bottom of the Waterat models), and, before
putting her overboard, the carriage bolts of the keel
board were shoved through these holes in my keel and
secured fast with the two wing nuts. Other sailors had
leeboards; I had a keel board! and, for a long time,
they were mystified as to what kept the Waterat
so well up into the eye of the wind with no visible
leeboard gear.
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© 2002 Craig
O'Donnell, editor &
general factotum.
May not be reproduced without my permission. Go scan
your own damn stuff.
