Jo Goes Canoeing!

We we're pretty sure that Jo would like Canoeing.  After all Becky and I both like it, but still Jo had never been.  Sure she has played with our Royalex boat in the grass and has pretty much mastered getting in and out of it, but she has never been out on the water.  So yesterday Becky and I decided that we all should go on an evening paddle down in Blakeley Harbor. 

We had to make a quick stop in town at the FedEx drop box...more on that later.  The fantastic thing about  where we live is that it is about two and a half minutes from a perfect put-in.  Its perfect because its a pebble beach, and there isn't a boat ramp for several miles, so the yahoo factor is pretty low.  After greeting a few sea kayakers coming in we paddled out on glassy water at high tide.

The fantastic thing about paddling at high tide in Blakely Harbor is that you can explore the old mill pond.  We were able to paddle under overhanging Maple trees to the point where Jo was exclaiming "Inside! Inside!".  We traced the shoreline bumping gently against the old pilings, and fallen trees.  The Maple trees were vibrating with the buzz of bees in the flowers, everything feels a few weeks late around here and we were enjoying the warm evening as much as the other creatures.

After returning home Jo and I set up My mom's old Viking Sewing machine for a quick project.  For our trip Becky and I have been wanting a few stuff sacks for organizing Jo's clothing, and some of our miscellaneous crap.  Buying stuff sacks at $10.00 a pop feels pretty ridiculous if you have ever made one, so I vowed to make time to sew up a few stuff sacks before we left for MN.  The trouble with sewing outdoor gear is sourcing the fabric for your projects.  We are fortunate here in Seattle to have a brilliant fabric store: Seattle Fabrics.  You can buy anything from Gore-Tex, to Fleece, to a multitude of different coated and un-coated nylon fabrics.   The trouble is that its all relatively expensive.  While I would have liked purchasing a few yards of super light and strong silnylon, I wanted to keep the stuff sack budget a low as possible.  So an internet search of stuff sack patterns brought me to a page describing how to turn a Tyvek Mailer, like the USPS uses for Priority mail, into a simple stuff sack.

 
Jo and I were able to crank out six stuff sacks in about and hour and a half.  It took a couple of tries to get the thread tension and bag dimensions right, but in the end we have a bunch of stuff sacks.  I scrounged up a bunch of 550 paracord I had laying around and fitted them with draw strings.  It was incredibly satisfying to make these bags.  I'm going to see if I can scrounge up some used ones at work tomorrow and make a few more.

We leave for Minnesota two weeks from tomorrow!

Preparation

It's a few weeks before we actually leave for Minnesota, but there remains many tasks that are proving to accomplish with our helpful assistant Jo.  It's a busy time of year for us in general.  Both Becky and I are sprinting to the end of the school year, her from the perspective of a grad student, mine from the perspective of an educator. 

We have been dusting off of our camping gear and generally getting organized.  Becky and I have been pouring over road maps and we have determined that we will be taking US-2 across Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota until we reach Duluth, Then we follow the lake North East.  We've been trying to figure out how we will be spending our time after we finish building our boat and searching through maps is a fantastic way to lose track of time. 

Along side our paper road atlas and assorted state highway maps I have been engrossed in the world of electronic maps that are available for free to upload to my Garmin GPS unit.  I have been fairly frustrated about how expensive Garmin maps are, and how proprietary the mapping software is.  I was happy to stumble on a recommendation for free GPS maps on the ADVrider forum.  Some of the folks over there were speaking highly of the simple but powerful website GPSFileDepot.  I'm excited because last year I found a complete set of electronic topo maps for my GPS of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana for free (buying Garmin maps would have cost over $400).  Now I have discovered a fantastic map that includes all the portages and campsites in the BWCA of Minnesota, so I'm pretty sure that I could waste a few hours planning how to paddle away the entire summer. 

I'm eagerly packing up tents and tools, counting down the days until we head East.

A Boat in 8 minutes

I am eager to to watch our boat take shape.  While there are many YouTube videos depicting cedar strip canoes, this one is a six day course (I think) compressed into an 8 minute video.  The biggest difference is that Becky and I will be doing most of the work ourselves with the occasional help of some of Becky's family.  Originally when Becky and I were looking for classes we only found courses where several strangers got together to build a single boat.  The idea being that by the end of the course you had the skills to go home and create your own in your garage.  One lucky person from the class gets to take the boat home (after paying for the materials).  Knowing that the likely hood of coming home and actually building a boat after the course (especially without the help of family members to look after Jo) was next to none,  we were elated to see that there was a class where you could go and build a boat and take it home.  Fantastic. 

The Project

Building boats isn't a part of my heritage.  My family traditions beyond a couple of generations are fairly unknown to me, but I'm fairly certain that shaping wood into boats isn't in my blood or anything.  Acquiring the skills to travel through wild places is something I had to seek out on my own, I didn't have a family member well versed in wilderness travel, though I have two parents that have been willing supporters in most of my endeavors.  

When I met my wife Becky in college I learned a lot about her through the stories she told me about her canoe journeys.   Her journey into adulthood was marked through progressively longer wilderness journeys, and while she has paddled the far north chasing the melting ice to the Arctic ocean, she isn't a boat builder either.  Our daughter Jo isn't really a boat builder either, but at 20 months she is extraordinarily confidant and is busy exploring the world around her.  

In a month the three of us will be heading to the shore of Lake Superior to attend a  canoe building class at the North House Folk School in Grand Maris Minnesota.  With the help of Becky's family who are joining us from St. Paul, Becky and I will build a cedar strip canoe under the tutelage of Ken Koscik.  

This course takes us from start to finish in this process.  We will mill all the wood for the canoe, assemble the strips, lay up the fiberglass, assemble all the seats, thwarts, and gunwales--in 10 days. 

Becky and I signed up for this class last fall and have been saying ever since that this canoe we are going to build will ultimately be for Jo, a giant awkward possession that will make moving into dorms and apartments difficult.  While the canoe will be for Jo, the class is certainly for Becky and I. This will be a chance to spend ten days working together to create a beautiful vehicle that will take our family on many journeys.