Category: Canoes

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

Win a Native American birchbark canoe in Penboscot museum raffle

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The birchbark canoe being raffled by the Penobscot Maritime Museum; photos courtesy of Jeff Scher

Penobscot Maritime Museum officials are raffling what I’m told is is a very fine replica of a Wabanaki
birchbark canoe of the early 19th century.

The Wabanakis were the indigenous people of Maine and New Brunswick, and included the Micmac, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Malecite and Abenaki tribes, and the canoe certainly sounds splendid from the description. It’s 16ft overall and made from birchbark lashed to white cedar gunwales using split spruce root, with seams sealed with a mixture of pine sap and fat.

It was built at the museum by a team of Native Americans from Maine and New Brunswick, led by Maine boatbuilder Steve Cayard; and the proceeds of the funds will be used to pay for another similar boatbuilding project at the museum in 2010.

Click here for details and to buy tickets: www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org/pressreleases.html

Light Trow Mk 2 – drawings for making a model


Light Trow model package plywood boat Gavin Atkin boat plan

Here’s a jolly little project for Easter – making a model of the Light Trow Mk 2. The drawings are here: Light Trow Mk 2 model, and they’re in the form of a zip file containing no less than 18 pdfs.

Almost all you need to do is print out each pdf in the zip package on the same-sized paper, stick it to card, model-maker’s plastic sheet or balsa, and cut it out and assemble as shown in the drawings… However, you’ll need some extra bits of balsa and nice white paper or cloth to make a sail and – Hey Presto! – you’ll have your own table-top Light Trow to play with. Have fun everyone! (Drawings now corrected to include the hole on the aft deck for the mizzen mast!)

For more on the Light Trow and trows generally, click here.

POST-SCRIPT The drawings for the full-sized Light Trow Mk2 are now close to complete. If you’reinterested in building this boat email me at gmatkin@gmail.com, and I’ll send you them – but only if you promise not to share them without my permission!

Toby Churchill’s photos of flat-bottomed boats on the Dordogne

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toby churchill, photos, flat-bottomed boats, dordogne, france

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Toby’s photos of flat-bottomed boats on the Dordogne river

Toby Churchill has sent in these shots of fishermen’s boats from the Dordogne, in France, which he found and photographed while holidaying with his family near Souillac. Here’s his story:

‘One day the lad and I took a Canadian canoe down the river. On the way we saw the old wooden boats, and later on, on a walk, we saw the others. The river, on the stretch we were on, consists of short sharp shallow rapids, and longer deep slow lagoons. Some stretches of the river are overlooked by quite steep cliffs – one enterprising fellow had a boathouse cut into the cliff, about 20 feet up, with davits to lower his barque into the river.’

For an intheboatshed.net post about the flat-bottomed boats of the Loire, click here; for a still earlier post about flat-bottomed boats in France, click here.