Bristol Bay Kayak
A Bristol Bay Kayak
This particular kayak showed up at Michaan's Auctions by the Bay in Alameda, CA on October 10, 2008. The people there kindly let me take pictures of the boat. I unfortunately wasn't able to get to the auction house until the day of the auction so I don't have much in the way of measurements. I do however have some photos some of which appear here. My intent isn't to do a complete documentation but rather to point out some key features that I noticed.
Bill Samson of Scotland has built a replica of the Bristol Bay boat in the museum at Ft. Ross. His writeup of the boat's construction and handling appear in the Masik newsletter Spring/Summer 2008.
Overall length of the boat is about 12 feet. Six feet are devoted to the front deck and about 26 inches to the cockpit. The rear deck takes up what was left of the 12 feet.
Here's a view of the nose of the boat. It shows how thin the nose gets. Nice for parting the waves.
Here's the view from the side showing the trademark Bristol Bay nose configuration.
This is a view of the rear of the boat. The deck stringer extends past the stern to form a carrying handle. A rub strip made of wood protected the skin on the underside of the boat. Most of it is broken away but some of it remains and is visible. The skin of Bristol Bay kayaks was sewn together into something like a sock up to the front of the coaming and then pulled on to the boat. The section of the stern from the keelson up to the gunwales was also sewn up with the seam on the inside. It was hooked on to the back after the front part of the skin was pulled on to the frame. After the back was hooked on, the rest of the deck seam from the back of the coaming to the stern was sewn up.
This view shows the rear seam. Unlike the rest of the skin where all the sewing was done on the inside, the sewing here was done from the outside.
This view shows a skin repair on the right side of the boat in the cockpit area.
At the coaming, the skin was pulled up to the bottom of the coaming with a doubled up rawhide cord.
The skin was then pulled up over the top of the coaming and laced to the inside of the skin at the bottom of the coaming.
The end of the forward deck stringer is supported by the deckbeam that also supports the cockpit coaming. All three are lashed together with rawhide.
The sides of the coaming are supported by stanchions carved in the shape of a face in profile looking forward.
The keelson of the boat is flat and has a groove carved down its middle.
Toward the back of the cockpit, the keelson has either been scarphed or else repaired. I am leaning toward a scraph since the direction of the break and its length seem unlikely to be accidental in an area where the keelson is well supported by ribs.
Ribs in the boat are of two sizes. Larger flat ribs populate the cockpit. Narrower, oval to almost round ribs populate areas forward and aft of the cockpit. Also visible in this picture is a splint lashed to the gunwales, no doubt to reinforce a break.
The picture above shows both the lashing pattern used to connect ribs to stringers and also the shape of the wide ribs. Arrow 1 points to the groove down the center of the rib. Arrow 2 shows the edge of the rib center. Outboard of this point, the rib is thinned down to more easily make the bend up toward the gunwales. Note also tooth marks left by the builder in the bent areas of the ribs. The builder clamped down on the ribs with his teeth and worked the two ends to give the ribs the right bend.
Where there was a gap between the ribs and the stringers, the builder inserted shims to keep the line of the stringers fair.
The boat has 5 deck beams forward. Four are shown here. The first two deckbeams from the front were constructed in two parts to avoid cross grain in the arms of a deckbeam carved of a single piece of wood.
The boat has 4 deck beams aft. The last two are in two parts.
The boat sustained some damage to the stringers, probably a blow which cracked the stringer and dislocated two ribs. Also visible is some recurve to the ribs in the center caused by pressure from a shrunken skin. The pressure also seems to have bowed the ribs slightly outward, making them more vertical than they would have been originally.
Visible toward the back is a double brace going from the keelson up to the gunwales. This feature is also present in some Aleutian kayaks and probably helps to keep the keelson centered.
A view toward the bow of the kayak. The T-shaped end of the lower bow piece is visible, as are the lashings that pull in the ends of the gunwales. The vertical support for the deck stringer at the bow is also visible.
A bundle of slats lay inside the kayak. The slats were connected to each other by a cord run through holes drilled in the ends of the slats. The whole thing, when unrolled would form a flexible wooden mat. The purpose of the mat was not apparent. It seemed a tad wide for use inside the kayak. The kayak did not come with a paddle.