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Lightweight Sub-5 Ounce Cook Kit
My friend Jeff Scott, who is an ultralight backpacker, sent me his most recent sub-5 ounce cook kit list. It weighs in at an astonishing 4.62 oz., and it features everything you’d need without skimping on anything. He uses it for on solo backpacking trips, but there’s no reason why this wouldn’t work on a paddling trip. The stove burns alcohol, so you need a supply of denatured alcohol or you can use HEET in the yellow bottle, which you can purchase from almost any gas station. Sub-5 Ounce Cook Kit List T’s B Side Burner Stove – 0.33 Spark Lite Fire Starter – 0.17 Snowpeak 600 Mug – 2.8…
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Siskiwit LV Sea Kayak Plans
The Siskiwit LV combines the quick maneuverability of a 16-foot day boat with the speed and tracking of a 18-foot touring kayak. This all-around, mid-sized British-style sea kayak suits a kayaker looking for a boat with good initial stability that is easy to edge and quick to turn. When the water gets rough, the Siskiwit LV feels more stable. It thrives in tidal flows, surf and waves. When packing like a backpacker, the Siskiwit LV provides enough room to mount a long tour. It will support you as you push your limits. The Siskiwit LV is the final refinement of a line of kayaks started from an anthropomorphically designed skin-on-frame…
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How to Adjust a Sea Kayak
Adjusting a sea kayak or touring boat to fit not only makes the boat more comfortable but also makes it easier to control. With the proper fit, edging, which helps you maneuver, feels easier, rolling becomes easier, and torso rotation, which propels a kayak forward, becomes unimpeded. For all-day touring, I feel that you need a snug fit that’s loose in all the right areas. That might sound like a slight contradiction, but let me explain. How to Size a Kayak There are a lot of factors in picking the right size kayak, such as what you’re going to do with it, what you weigh, how much gear you’re going…
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Sea Kayak Cockpit Plans
Only a few of the kayak plans on PaddlingLight include specific cockpit designs, which leaves it open to you to decide which cockpit to use. I like a cockpit that runs around 32 inches by 17 inches. The plans for this cockpit run just slightly over 32 and just under 17. I find this length and width makes it easier for people over 5’10” to get in the kayak vs. 30-inch versions. The Iggy plans include a smaller cockpit The plans come as a pdf that you can print off at a office supply store, such as Officemax or Staples, or any printing store that can print up to 36…
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Head North to Old Woman: A Lake Superior Kayaking Adventure
This is a guest post from sea kayaker Tim Gallway. It was a cold August morning, and I was heading for Wawa, Ontario to teach at the Greenland Symposium put on by Naturally Superior Adventures (NSA). Or at least I would have if the event hadn’t been cancelled. Due to many last minute cancellations instructors would outnumber students, so the plug was pulled. But I was still going. I was planning on spending the long weekend sleeping on beaches, playing in the surf and rock gardens around Superior Provincial Park with the other instructors that were going to do the same thing I was. One way or another I was…
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Navigation: Dead Reckoning
In navigation, dead reckoning is determining your current position based on your last known location. Because canoes and kayaks seldom leave sight of shore, you mainly use it during crossings, along featureless shorelines, in foggy conditions or to give you an estimated location between fixes. You can use the same technique to estimate your future position. To do dead reckoning, start with a known location, such as a navigation fix, marked on your chart or map. From that point, advance a line along your known course a distance based on your speed and the time traveled using the formula shown below. Current or wind can affect your DR; during critical…
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Free Canoe Plans and Free Kayak Plans Project Summary
In September 2010, I decided to draw and release a free canoe plan or a free kayak plan each week for the entire winter. I planned the project to end on April 1st, 2011. My goal was to produce between 24 and 26 total plans based on historic designs found in Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. A few of the models came from other sources. In all, I drew and released 25 plans. Things I Learned On a project of this magnitude, about 100+ hours of computer time, I’m bound to learn something, and I did. Basically, I learned to quickly model boats using DELFTship Pro, and…
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Free Canoe Plans: Beothuk Canoe
The Beothuk Canoe appears as Figure 87 in the Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. It differs from every other canoe in that book, and no actual physical model existed when Adney surveyed the canoes. He based the drawing on historic and sometime conflicting descriptions, and a birch-bark canoe toy found in the grave of a Beothuk boy. Chapelle notes that when turned upside down the canoe makes a shelter with a 3-foot head clearance. The canoe can also heel over on the water further than other canoes. Chapelle speculates that the canoes were designed for open-water navigation. Although it may seem like an April Fools’ Day joke,…
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Spring, Cabin Fever and Wanderlust
Spring is almost here in the northland and on the shore of Lake Superior. Robins flew back into town the other day. I saw a raven carrying sticks for nests. The gulls are back and loud and dive-bombingly protective of the shoreline and their islands. Tons of eagles soar along the shore. And the deer, both dead and living, line the highways where the melting snow exposes grass. The wolves have followed the deer. These signs signal spring. Lake Superior never really froze over this winter, so I’ve been paddling all winter long, but the weather is heating up and the days reach temperatures above freezing, the days are longer…
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Free Plans – Coast Salish Style Canoe
The Coast Salish Style Canoe appears on page eight of Leslie Lincoln’s Coast Salish Canoes. Lincoln writes that it’s the classic style and is housed at the Vancouver Centennial Museum, Vancouver, B.C. The boat measures over 27 feet making it as long as most voyager canoes. Lincoln also notes that the Coast Salish style canoes evolved for use in inland seas. This canoe features an interesting flare along the sheerline. The design works to keep the craft from shipping waves while maintaining a narrow hull for speed. It’s reflected in the bow; where, as Lincoln notes, the upper edge flares to keep out waves, but the lower, narrower section cuts…
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Homemade Sideburner Alcohol Stove
Recently, a friend turned me onto a sideburner alcohol stove that he bought for camping. It was built from two aluminum beer bottles. The big advantage, he said, was that the stove acts as its own pot stand. One thing that I don’t like is using fiddly pot stands that are common when using homemade pop-can stoves; it seemed like a sideburner solved the problem. I decided to build one and test it out. I choose ZenStove’s Basic SideBurner. Building a Pop Can Stove Most pop-can stoves take a few hours to make, but the process seems easy if you’re into do-it-yourself projects. This stove combines three parts. The stove’s…
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Free Plans – Old Model Ottawa River Algonkin Canoe
The old model Algonkin canoe from the Ottawa River area represents a canoe built before contact with other tribes and the fur trade changed the types of canoes built by the Algonkin. It features high ends, a flat sheerline and resembles canoes used during the fur trade. In the Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, Howard I. Chapelle writes that this style may have been the type of canoe that fur trade boats were based on. The canoe shown in these free plans has a surprisingly high carrying capacity. The flat bottom should make it stable. Personally, I love the look of the stems. It’d be fun to…
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Navigation: Doubling Angle on the Bow Fix
The doubling angle on the bow fix is a useful way to find your location when you only have one marker or feature to fix from. It’s less accurate than fixing your position with two points, and your knowledge of your speed, any currents and wind affects the accuracy of the exercise, but when you only have one point to fix from, it can help you get a reasonable measure of your position. It’s something you might use on a long crossing to help fix your position when passing shoals or markers. Take a bearing to a known feature or marker, and note the bearing and angle off your bow.…
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Skin-on-Frame Version of the Unalaska Baidarka
Shortly after I published the plans for the 1894 Unalaska Baidarka, Bill Samson wrote me about his skin-on-frame replica of the boat. He said that he worked from a pre-publication survey from master kayak draftsman Harvey Golden, author of Kayaks of Greenland: The History and Development of the Greenlandic Hunting Kayak, 1600-2000. Golden’s survey differs from Chapelle’s. Samson writes, “The Chapelle survey seems to have been done in a hurry and shows an additional stringer each side that isn’t actually there. Harvey’s also shows a distinct turn-up of the deck ridge at the tail – There’s no evidence that this is due to collapse. The ribs have all collapsed –…
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Free Plans for the 1888 King Island Kayak
The 1888 King Island Kayak appears as figure 181 in The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. Howard I. Chapelle writes that the King Islanders were known as skilled kayakers. Their kayaks followed a pattern similar to the Nunivak Island kayaks with a narrower and more V-shaped hull and different stems. The King Island boat’s stem sweeps upward and ends in what Chapelle called “a small birdlike head, with a small hole through it to represent eyes and to serve for a lifting grip…” John Heath considers the cockpit coaming on this version of the King Island kayak atypical, because it doesn’t rest on any cross members. It…
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