Boat Building
Culture Camp
Building Baidarkas
Making Bentwood hats
Making Drums
Views of Cold Bay and environs
Stuffed critters
Baidarka Building
Baidarka Building was supervised by Kurt Schmidt and myself. We started ripping wood and prepping materials a few days before the start of culture camp with the help of Cold Bay students. Our goal was to build three boats so each of the visiting schools could get one boat. The boats we built were 14 feet long instead of the more typical 17 feet long to give us a better chance of finishing some hulls in 3 days.
Dave and Harley are lashing deck beams to gunwales.
Before we steamed the ribs, we rounded the edges. Here, everyone in the group is pitching in.
I am demonstrating the running lashing pattern while students look on attentively.
And students are putting their new found knowledge to work. With this many hands, the hull was lashed in no time.
At the end of Saturday, we decided to take the boats out for a short paddle to see how they behaved. Lacking roof racks, we had to transport the boats inside the truck. Luckily, these were 14 footers and not 20 footers.
Even an hour from sunset, the wind was still blowing briskly. But we found a lee shore where we could paddle in the shade of the bluff in the background. Here we have the kayaks tucked next to a log so they wouldn't blow away. The plastic bag I am holding is my kamleika or paddling jacket, an improvisation necessitated by the lack of something more conventional.
Posing with paddle and paddling jacket and the eastern shore of Cold Bay in the background.
And finally, the boat in the water, floating nicely. After Kurt finished with the pictures, we headed north for two miles and then returned in good weather, only to be greeted by a hail storm, a hundred yards from our landing site.