Every year the Fort Ross Interpretive Association (FRIA) works with the State Parks Department to put on "Living History Day" at Fort Ross State Park. This is scheduled for the last Saturday in July so this year it should be on the 29th. They try to re-create a day in the life of The Fort when it was manned by the Russian American company. They have sailing ships in the cove, cannon firing, traditional crafts, a blacksmith, musket practice, Russian singing, and skin kayaks or baidarkas. Steve Caspar is an avid baidarka builder and he is often down at the cove with several boats. BASK has several members, like Paul MacIntyre, who have built skin boats and have been known to take them to this event. Some of the kayakers have made traditional kayaking costumes, like spray-skirts that look like they are made out of seal gut and hats made out of bent wood. Sometimes they demonstrate kayaking skills in the cove as part of Living History Day.
I usually paddle a plastic kayak to the event to avoid the crowded parking at the fort. I told Steve Caspar once that I didn't have a skin boat to bring and he said "Well then you had better get busy"! This year I had an opportunity to correct this oversight. FRIA sponsored a week-long Baidarka Workshop by master builder R. Bruce Lemon on January 8th through 16th. The class took place at beautiful Stillwater Cove Ranch four miles north of Fort Ross State Historic Park. I have considered classes like this offered in far away places and I could not believe my luck that this class was practically in my back yard. Like Ken Mannshardt, our reigning BASK president and another student in the class, I like the discipline of a class for a project like this. I could build my own Baidarka at home but it would spend years sitting around in my barn before finally getting finished. The cost of the class for all the materials and tuition was $1600.00. This is less than a new fiberglass boat!
In some ways, the short time and fast pace of the class was not ideal. I was disappointed that I did not get to carve my own bow or bend the wood for the coaming. These parts were provided pre-made by Bruce. Unfortunately, adding these steps would have made it impossible to finish the class in only one week. In addition, Bruce did several of the crucial steps for us, to make sure they got done right the first time. I would have liked to have learned more by making my own mistakes, but again this too would have prevented the boat from being finished in the narrow time that we had. The pre-made parts and Bruce's guidance means that the boat can be build by people with moderate woodworking skills.
Ken and I both came to the class with the lingering remains of The Flu and had to drag ourselves through the first few days. The days were long, starting at 9:00 AM and often lasting until 9:00 PM (with a few hours off for lunch and dinner). Even after our flu symptoms went away we still felt the pressure of the schedule. Ken said "This is like going to a job"! and "I'm supposed to be on vacation "! We took pictures of the boats as they progressed and I put them all in my WEB page where you can still view them at http://www.kayaker.net/baidarka and see all the work we accomplished in 8 days!
John Sperry, a member of the board of directors of FRIA, took the class and built a boat with the help of Jerry Ruby. Jerry owns Stillwater Cove Ranch and it was his barn that was cleaned out to make room to build four boats. The fourth boat was built by David Marshall, who drove down from Redmond Washington to take the class. Bruce had us all working on each other's boats from time to time to make sure they all got done at the same time.
We got to choose several measurements to fit our boats before we made the frame. With the materials we had at hand we could make the boats as narrow as 20" and most of us chose to make them narrow. The length was fixed at 17 feet. We moved one of the upper ribs to land where our feet would go. Our toes would hang onto this rib instead of having foot-pegs. John and Jerry, building one boat together, ended up putting in an extra rib so each of them has his own built-in foot rest.
The boats are made with several different types of wood in the frame. Douglas fir is the most common wood, the bent ribs are white oak, and there is pine and spruce in the bow and stern pieces. Several of the crucial joints were glued together with epoxy, but most of the joints are held together with artificial sinew. The artificial seal-skin is a nylon filter-cloth material that we painted with many layers of a urethane epoxy varnish. You can see through the resulting skin almost well enough to count drybags inside the boat! My red float bags and blue foam cockpit pad inside the white skin make my baidarka look a patriotic red white and blue! Dave decided that his boat looked like "a kayak in its underwear" and sent away for some opaque white pigment before putting the final coats on his boat. Bruce assures us that the urethane epoxy hardening in the nylon skin results in a tough material that will stand up to rocks almost as well as fiberglass. The resulting boat weighs only 40 pounds and carries easily on the shoulder.