hello world – 3, part 2

| Categories: kayak-building, kayaking | Tags:

I am making a slow start, working mainly on the implementation plan. It’s better to think out all building details beforehand carefully and thoroughly. Unlike a software project though, which is more flexible, in a hardware project, you would have little chance to correct something that went wrong, or correcting it would cost much time, effort, materials… There’re many things to be considered, and require experiences to get done right! One important concern is weight.

HW – 1 weighs at 35 kg, HW – 2 is roughly 30 kg. With my previous two boats, and with my inexperiences, I did put lots more materials into the building, hoping for strength, but they turned out to be really heavy indeed. If HW – 3 could be built at 20 kg, it’s a great success! Imagine that your boat is 10 kg lighter, and that 10 kg saved could be used for additional food, drink on longer trips! And of course, the weight saving should come without any compromisation on quality and durability!

HW – 3 is a really complicated boat, the hull will be stitched together with 4 plywood bilges , while the deck has 5 main bilges. And since the 5.5 m hull length exceeds twice the standard plywood sheet length (2.44 m), there will be 2 joints in each of the hull’s bilges, which I’ve decided to be dovetail joints to further reduce weight and increase strength. In all, every parts of this boat will be more complicated (compared to my previous boats), and hence requires ‘astute’ planning and execution.

Below, I’m building the two halves (hull and deck) of the framing box that would help forming the kayak from plywood planks into the precise desired shape! With the new air compressor and nail gun and glue, all these frames are just quick and easy task which takes just several hours to complete. I’ve switched to using the excellent TiteBond 2 wood glue instead of other normal Polyvinyl Acetate (PVA), which has much better water resistance capability.

Hello World – 3 p1
Hello World – 3 p2
Hello World – 3 p3

hello world – 3, part 1

| Categories: kayak-building, kayaking | Tags:

All preparations is almost finished, to “lay the keel” and start the building of Hello World – 3, my next boat, a Nick Schade designed, 18 feet (5.55 m) S&G Night Heron sea kayak. Many would ask why building another boat, while I’ve already had the Hello World – 1 & 2. Actually, HW – 1 is just a simple, slow canoe for poking around, HW – 2 is a recreational kayak suitable only for short trips, as proved in my last paddling to Vũng Tàu in June this year.

First, consider some facts, many of Vietnam islands are around 100 km off from shore. Phú Quý island is about 85 km from Mũi Né, Phan Thiết; Phú Quốc island is 110 km from Rạch Giá, Hà Tiên; Thổ Chu island is another 100 km from the southern most point of Phú Quốc; Côn Đảo island is about 95 km from Hậu Giang estuary, Sóc Trăng; Bạch Long Vỹ island is also 100 km from Cát Bà, Hải Phòng… Some are nearer such as: Cồn Cỏ, Chàm, Lý Sơn islands… all around 30 km.

Second, consider some other facts. If your sustained paddling speed is around 5 ~ 6 kmph, it’s not really possible to reach those islands, at least with a coastal – cruising small kayak which is, by design, not suited for multi – days sea crossing without resting, 14 ~ 16 hours of continuous paddling is almost the upper limit for an average man like me, after which you would need a good sleep to recover. Obviously a boat capable of sustaining 8 ~ 9 kmph and beyond is very much needed.

Third, is the target of 100 ~ 110 km in 24 hours really feasible!? The answer is: ça dépend! It depends on too many things: the weather, the wind, waves, the current, the temperature, all of the unknown factors. And for the known factors: your boat, your equipments, your physical preparation, your planning and strategy… all need to be the – very – best – of – class to push the limits and reach the target. That’s why I would invest lots of time and efforts into the building of this HW – 3 kayak.

Hello World – 3 p1
Hello World – 3 p2
Hello World – 3 p3

passages

| Categories: music | Tags:
     Offering ►
    Sadhanipa ►
 Channels and Winds ►
 Ragas in minor scale ►
Meetings along the edge ►

Partly presented very long before, some compositions that’s highly inspirational to me, the Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass album: Passages. I particularly like the Meetings along the edge and Ragas in minor scale pieces. It’s a real pleasure to enjoy the profound sounds of the Indian sitar, sarod, tabla… in conjunction with the Western instruments violin, viola, cello… For so long, my mind has been too dull and monotonous… for such a delicate and elegant music.

a watery saigon – 3

| Categories: kayaking
Móc ngang sông phau phau làn trắng,
Nước in trời loang loáng vẻ xanh.
Buông theo chiếc lá lênh đênh,
Đè muôn đợt sóng mông mênh cõi ngoài.

A watery Saigon p1
A watery Saigon p2
A watery Saigon p3

Some more updates for the A – Watery – Saigon photo album, some miscellaneous thoughts. I’m no real photographer to say anything insight about photography, most of the time, I have the camera in automatic mode and make quite random shots just to show I’ve been there, done that… For the last few years, I’ve been watching many young Vietnamese ‘professional photographers’ who made great efforts in capturing landscape pictures, e.g: waiting for multiple days on a mountain top to catch the right moment, etc…

And they showed me their photos, ‘really beautiful’ I must say (compared to my well – under – average images, and I do wish my pictures could be like that, technically): perfect color and arrangement, unique point of view, etc… But let me get this straight, and don’t get me wrong on the topic: they lack a spirit, a sense of movement, a sense of selfness, they are just plain boring! In order to become great photographer, you should stop taking photos and do something else, see the world through your eyes first, before seeing it through those expensively distortional lenses!

workshop, 1

| Categories: kayaking, workshop

Almost finished with upgrading my woodworking workshop, just some more painting, fitting and cleaning up jobs needed! This would be a “well – equipped, well – organized” place to carry out my upcoming projects, which is getting more and more sophisticated! Several assets showed below, including my new Makita MLT100 table saw, the Dremel power tools and other wood carving tools, the Maktec MT362 router and its home – brew routing table, the air compressor and nail gun, a dozen types of chemicals for epoxying and painting, etc… basic things for what could be called a boat – building – workshop!

Drawers for storing various hand held power tools, all these tools need proper care and maintenance.

Makita MLT100 table saw, with this, I can cut wood to the desired sizes, without having to have them cut at the wood mill nearby.

Dremel’s MultiTool and MotoSaw, suitable for small wood working. These are intended for some marquetry works later on.

Maktec MT362 router and its being – built routing table. I used the router itself to install the steel center plate holding the machine underneath.

Various chemicals, the excellent Titebond II wood glue, the 511 epoxy putty, wood carving tools, air compressor, the new Bosch circular saw.

Some more shots around my workshop. Sooner or later, I would need a dust collecting system, or maybe just a vacuum cleaner.

My woodworking workshop

craftsmanship

| Categories: kayaking, workshop
Tôi đang đi, đi trên sông chở đầy nắng hồng.
Đêm nay nghe tiếng sóng biển Đông,
Tôi đang nghe, tôi đang nghe..

Often, I’m not quite pleased with my boat building products, it’s not up to the quality level I’m expecting. And quite regularly, I’m in a dilemma situation that I don’t know what I should improve on: my craftsmanship or my seamanship. (Well, I know, all sound big bold words: craftsmanship & seamanship, but let use them anyhow). The fact is that I’ve just turned to woodworking and boat building for around a year, there’re lots of things still to learn and to improve.

I’ve decided to invest on improving my ‘craftsmanship’. Many hours spent on reading documents and browsing woodworking, boatbuilding forums. Also decided to upgrade my small workshop with more professional tools: a table saw, jig table saw, router and a routing table, air compressor and nail gun, etc… I’m in the preparation process of building Hello World – 3, my next boat, a boat I can trust my life on in the upcoming journeys, and I want to do it as good as I can.

As for Hello World – 3, there’ll be no fixed schedule. All boat designs and boat buildings is kind of compromisation, there’s no such thing as “ultimate perfection”, but I’ll do it until it’s good enough, with no pressure on a launch day, and as my free times permit. There would be lots of new things built into this Hello World – 3: electric pump, battery, electronics, and solar charging system, etc… That’s still a long way to go, concentrate on the basic task of building woodworking tools for now!

It looks like that I’m turning into a cabinet maker for now, of the 3 pieces of “cabinet”, one will be the pedestal for my new Makita MT100 table saw, one would be a routing table (to be fitted with the Maktec MT362 router), and the other table will be used for small cutting and carving tasks with the Dremel’s MultiTool and MotoSaw. I’m adding more and more into my tool collection: Bosch (and it’s subsidiaries Dremel & Skil), Makita (and it’s subsidiary Maktec) and Fein.

These ‘furnitures’ are really basic things built with plywood, some wooden frames, and all painted, so I put ‘aesthetics’ aside and focus on usability. One day, I’ll build all my wooden household objects in finer quality myself, but for now, just these simple woodworking facilities, which I need to complete within this month. The plan is to have Hello World – 3 building started somewhere next month, a huge pile of planned works to be done before the rainy season returns the next year…

Additional assets for the workshop, a small coffee table and 4 chairs, for taking a beverage in the hot tropical afternoon. All built from cheap plywood, and painted with wood color, this is also to test my new idea of painting and color pigment mixing, all takes only a day to complete, a quick and dirty job indeed. Building fine and good looking furniture, like building a good boat, takes lots of time and labour, so I’m pleased with these crude but functional things for now.

My woodworking workshop

fortitudine vincimus

| Categories: kayaking

Getting a bit more serious in paddle exercising day after day. I start to carry a 15kg (of brick and stone) load onto my kayak, and would gradually increase the load. Also, resting time between each paddling legs is reduced to the minimum possible. Sunny or rainy, until today, a 20 km paddling path is just like a gentle promenade to me, I should be more aggressing and demanding on myself.

But practicing hard won’t stop me to relax and have some nice picture shot occasionally along the way. Whenever I’m tired or feeling down, there’re always the nice sceneries, and the motto (on this post title) to put my mood into order again! For more on the Latin motto, read about Ernest Shackleton, his polar explorations, and his incredible voyage on the 21 foot open boat James Caird!

boating books

| Categories: sailing | Tags:

Some very worth reading books on boating. Some are very well – known novels that I’ve read already (a few of them in multiple times), some are new documents that I’m reading or plan to. According to my categorization, they fall into the following 3 groups: Fiction, purely imaginary, although not real, they’re highly inspirational, Non – fiction, real accounts of real peoples and their adventures, Technical, the fundamental details that help building those archivements. My 3 simplified, consecutive steps of a self – actualization process… All these books are available in public domain, I collected and compiled into PDF format, click on each titles to download.

FICTION


Moby dick – Herman Melville, my all – time favorite!


Twenty thousand leagues under the sea – Jules Verne


Sea wolf – Jack London


Treasure island – Robert Louis Stevenson

NON – FICTION


A thousand miles in a Rob Roy canoe – J. Macgregor


Voyage of the paper canoe – Nathaniel Bishop


Alone in the Caribbean – Frederic Fenger


Sailing alone around the world – Joshua Slocum, my favorite, another neo – classical Ahap captain!

TECHNICAL


The dory book – John Gardner


Small boat building – H.W. Patterson


Canoe and boat building for amateurs – W.P. Stephens


The Gougeon brothers on boat construction, a very helpful, thorough book on wood working and epoxy.

the call

| Categories: kayaking, music | Tags:
We’re all following a strange melody.
We’re all summoned by a tune…
And we dance beneath the moon!
The piper remixed - ABBA ►

Really busy lately, can’t even find some little time slots for going paddling! For many time I’ve been hearing it, the tune sounds like Enya’s Orinoco Flow (a.k.a: Sail away), and I know, it’s calling, it’s calling me. I just have to “Slide to answer”, but pressing “Remind me” is my only option right now! Surely won’t miss your next call again!

folding bike

| Categories: biking, kayaking

A new toy, a “towing platform” for the kayak, a GIANT tiny folding bike that can be carried on the boat through the waterways! Steel frame, 20 inches wheels, 6 speeds derailleur gears, and weighted at 15 kg, this is the best balance I can find: small enough to be folded and transported on the kayak, while still large enough to be able to attain some speed while towing the kayak in return on long roads! To be used in my upcoming trips!