Category: Canoes

Canoes, kayaks, sailin canoes, open canoes, paddles, skin on frame canoes, canoe plans

Matt Atkin photographs boats and river life in Cambodia, part 1

 

 

 

My brother Matt Atkin’s mission to photograph interesting boats and water-borne life throughout the Far East using his Fuju Finepix X100 continues with a mass of illuminating photos from near Siem Reap, Cambodia.

He tells me these shots are of the floating village of Tonle Sap on the River Mekong, which as well as floating homes, a floating school and shops, a floating church (it has a cross above in the photographs), and a temple. The entire village moves from time to time depending on the level of the river.

I must say I like the cute little outboard canoes driven by what could easily be petrol-driven strimmers, and intrigued by the shallows-dodging prop-rudder-steering doberries the larger boats have.

Keep out of the prop’s way, though, if you happen to fall in!

The next selection of shots from this collection will include kids in large washing bowls, and a hand-powered travelling shop.

 

The boats of The Gambia

 

Our friend Vic Smith has sent us this striking set of photos of boats – dugouts and pirogues with built-up sides – in use along the coast of The Gambia in Western Africa, and along the country’s major river, also called The Gambia.

Vic and his wife Tina live in Sussex, but have strong links with the small African country; they’re involved in supporting a local school and have friends among local musicians, some of whom play in the UK from time to time.

For those of us with a particular interest in the evolution of water craft, these photos of ancient boat types illustrate one of the key ways in which boats have evolved around the world. In this case the ancient dugout leading to the pirogue, which here is the name given to a dugout hull with built-up sides providing improved carrying capacity and improved seaworthiness.

One could almost draw a parallel between the turf boats of Somerset used on the Levels, and the possibly related but more sophisticated and high-sided flatners developed for fishing in the bays along the Bristol Channel – which by chance also sport spritsails not unlike the one shown in the gallery of Vic’s photos below.

It’s also interesting to me that some of the larger pirogues seem to have been motorised without having requiring much adaptation that I can see. And again, notice how the boats are pulled up the beaches on rollers and skids in much the same way that people still haul craft up on the English South Coast, for example at Hastings and Beer. However, in The Gambia this operation involves a great many more people.

Thinking about this operation, it’s wonderful to see whole communities cheerfully working together in this way, but the other side of this coin is very low per capita incomes that must result from so many people having to be involved.

From the Wikipedia I learn that about a third of the population in the country lives below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day, despite the country’s undoubted advantages of fertile soil for farming, and busy fishing and tourism trades. It makes you think…

Thanks for the photos Vic!

Sailing Canoes – a brief history, published in 1935

 

This 1935 history of sailing canoes originally published by the American Canoe Association is well worth a look.

It has been republished online by the editors of the excellent Skinny Hull magazine. (There’s another link to this document at the Dragonfly Canoe Works website (I’m guessing this may be the original source).

The photos in the brief history may be a little fuzzy, but they tell an amazing story of early diversity before the uniformity of the ACA classes was established, and extreme sailing long before the invention of the wetsuit.

The text itself is US-oriented, as might be expected, but interesting nonetheless, and makes a good job of summarising the development of the decked sailing canoe on both sides of the Atlantic, starting with John Macgregor’s Rob Roy.

I wonder what happened to Nathaniel Herreshoff’s beautiful but scary-looking proposed class of 1935?

Turning to Skinny Hull magazine itself, I’m particularly taken with an article in the first issue – it’s by John Summers of the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario, and features what I think is a fabulous little craft. There are supposed to be stitch and glue plans to buy too, though it might be necessary to contact Mr Summers directly as I can’t see them where they’re supposed to be.

Finally, there’s this sequence of photos on YouTube to consider…