Soul-mate solo canoe

 Home |  

Introduction

Last update: April 3 2008                                                                Amersfoort, april 2008

Why am I building a canoe?

I first learnt paddling as a teenager back in the Sixties. When I was a student, Geoff and I built two polyester kayaks. The incentive in those days was financial. A few years later, having hit far too many rocks, we borrowed the mould from our student canoe club and built another two 4 meter polyester kayaks in the living room of our first house.

Since those earlier days, I always thought it would be nice to build my own boat again, but was always far too busy.

Now I have more time and last year my interest was revived when I saw an advertisement for a course to learn how to build a wooden canoe. Despite never having used a saw, chisel or other woodworking tools, I decided to enrol for the couse at Macboat in Medemblik . There, together with our instructor Simon Davids and two other students we built a Bobs Special canoe in 8 days.

As preparation for the boat building course I also enrolled for a course in Utrecht with the "Stadswerkplaats Utrecht" to learn basic manual woodworking skills and thereafter a second course to learn to use electrical woodworking machines.

With all this basic knowledge and supplemented with information from books, friends, acquaintances and Internet together with patience, trial and error, learning on the job, my own boat is slowly taking shape.

Valerie