My dream for building this canoe and using it for conducting eco-tours was spawned on a dark winter evening in the arctic community of Iqaluit on Baffin Island, NWT. I hate to admit it, but my dream at the time was based largely on desperation and escape - the need to return to the balmy climes of Victoria, B.C. and more romantic ways of making a living. I thought if I could build North America's largest cedar strip canoe I would be able to develop a most successful tour business and retire to sail the world with my family at age 60.

How wrong a premise this turned out to be! But in my naivete and boundless energy I somehow achieved the building of this unique craft (my first ever) in 1991, then found myself at the helm of a giant Canoe and adventure tour business, with little to steer by!

I subsequently discovered that building a boat is the easy part, and that the bigger challenge lying ahead of me was in promoting my business and in finding ways of supporting myself in-between seasons. I am now resigned to the fact I will not be retiring at an early age. But fortunately I have found satisfaction with the freedom and creativity this life style offers and especially for the many new friends I have made. But above all, it is fun to be with tourists and fellow adventurers, their spirit is contagious!

Completed in 1991, our cedar strip canoe took us 2 years to build. Much of this time was spent researching designs for West Coast canoes in museums and exploring Vancouver Island for well-seasoned old growth cedar needed to build it.

Thanks are expressed to the late Bill Reid and to Bill Holme (former Curator of the Burke Museum of Seattle), for their encouragement of my project and for directing me to build a replica of a Nuu-chah–nulth canoe, which I was later to confirm is the most sea-worthy of all the cean-going canoes to ply the West Coast of this Island.  Steve Vagvolgy was the marine architect from Sidney who skillfully translated the rough concepts to  precise design drawings for cedar strip construction.   Rose, Lisa and Heidi, were my support group throughout all this. Thanks gang!

First big challenge: getting the wood and sawing it to size: Edge grain red cedar is shown here being sawn to a thickness of 5/8 inches. This old growth wood was air-dried for over 2 years so as to be dry enough for cedar strip construction. Edges were alternatively shaped concave and convex ( “bead and cove”) to increase the surface area for gluing .

After the shed was built (another major project), work was begun preparing the planking: 10 foot planks had to be glued ("scarfed")  together into 40 to 50 foot lengths. Temperature sensitive West System Epoxy was used throughout.

Planks used were knot-free. As a result not one split occurred in all the nails that were used to edge-nail each plank to one another.

A strongback (frame supporting the construction of the entire base of the frames for the Canoe was made out of 4x16 fir timbers. After the architect's lines were transferred to paper, the patterns were used to cut  the plywood frames. About 20 of them—each about 30 inches apart, were placed in position for each of the stations along this strongback.

Then after carefully positioning the frames (with the help of a level), the cedar strip planks were nailed and glued from the gunwales up each side, until the last plank was inserted at the “centre of the top of the hull. One suggestion here: make sure your shed is able to withstand a snow storm while you are doing this (which means using lag bolts for the critical supports rather than nails- which I unfortunately did the first time around).

Four layers of 6 oz. Fiberglass cloth were then laid over the hull. Nearly a full barrel of West System epoxy was used in total. (Two layers of cloth on the inside). Again, the secret here is maintaining the right temperature and rolling out all the air bubbles from the cloth.

The keel , keelson and prow were made of fir, as were the stringers. The picture below shows completion of the hull. Each plank or strip was glued and edge-nailed to the one beneath it- like a barrel.

Standing on top of the completed shiny hull, we were tempted to keep the finish natural rather than to paint it (over the years we have not only painted the outside, but most of the insides as well to keep the UV from deteriorating the epoxy).

Now the next challenge was how to get the Canoe from its construction site behind the house and onto our trailer in the front yard where we could begin finishing the insides.. This  required that we lift the Canoe 30 feet above the house, and turn it right-side up in positioning it on the trailer.

 

Part Two:

Unfortunately, our canoe was too big to haul out of the shed we built it in. Sound familiar? However. we were fortunate to have the Nanaimo Sea Festival Society donate a crane. Our only obligation: to display our Canoe at Swyalana Lagoon during their week-long festivities- culminating with the world’s biggest Bath Tub Race (from Nanaimo to Vancouver). This picture shows our canoe being lifted over the house, and rotated 180 degrees before being set down on her new trailer on our front lawn.

 

 

Note the hole cut in the hull for the engine well (I remember it well, as minutes before launching a helper fell asleep at the sander and put a hole in her below the waterline!, requiring me to postpone the launching til midnight).

 

Two layers of cloth were laid on the inside of the hull, completing the epoxy “sandwich, ensuring that no moisture would ever get at the wood.

The yellow cedar ribs have just been steamed and epoxied in position. A plastic section of drain pipe was used for the steam box and a kettle to generate the steam.

Yellow cedar is expensive, but it is hard to beat for boat building where flex, wear and strength are important . And nothing beats it for smell!

Thwarts and gunwales take shape. As you can appreciate when gluing, you can never have enough clamps!

 

 

Part Three:

 

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Being a novice at boat building, I naively thought that more than half my job was over when I finished the hull. Wrong!. The above picture shows how the yellow and red cedar sole (flooring) was patterned and the red cedar thwarts installed.

Dave Marston, a native artist from Chemainus, displays the finished Sea-Wolf’s head he carved and painted. His intricate art work along both sides of the canoe expressing the body parts of the wolf is shown on the right. The Sea Wolf is an important symbol of the Nuu-chah-nulth people and is placed on the prow of all their canoes (symbolizing the spiritual ink between the Sea Wolf and the Killer Whale).

I complete the plywood rudder, one of my few mistakes in building this vessel (it snapped off the first time I hit a reef with it). I made the bottom of my replacement rudder of steel and had it pivot on a bolt through the remaining portion of the plywood shaft. This has proved to be the answer, as kelp, logs and any otaher impact with the underworld will now push the rudder up instead of breaking it off.

And finally there. are paddles to be made- all 18 of them.  Sitka Spruce was used, renown for its high strength to weight ratio (remember Howard Hugh's Spruce Goose?). Yew wood would have worked too, but it was too expensive to obtain. Each of my paddles was hand painted using a Kwagiulth design patterned after designs used by the famous native photographer and explorer, Edward Curtis (when he had his canoes built for his film "In the Land fo the Head Hunters" in the early 1900's)..

Our finished canoe is now powered by a 45 hp Honda 4 stroke outboard (in a well) which gives it a top speed of 15 knots - and very little noise or smoke (we started out with an 18 HP Merc.). We also carry hand-carved paddles and of course the traditional sprit sails you see. She  draws less than 6 inches with the engine and rudder tilted up. Although we now limit passengers to 12, she is able to carry 18 paddlers and their gear. She is well suited for her new use - which is as a kayak mothership - ably carrying up to 10 kayaks together with paddlers and gear on overnight trips to the Gulf Islands.