Before I encountered the ice, I had awakened from a sleep that, settled into on a deserted spit of sand, was peaceful and serene. That ended the following morning, when a flock of seagulls, seeing the tent, landed and surrounded my shelter in the hopes of a free meal. As many as they could get away with.
And they didn't play by the rules - with their young fledglings to plead the way, and the supervising adults to coach them, they managed to coax some eggs and fish out of me before I escaped.
So much for a peaceful breakfast, which is my main meal for the day - for the simple reason that going to bed after your main meal can and will bring unwanted guests into your camp, when you are least prepared to handle the intrusion. They simply catch the scent and follow it in.
By having my main meal just before I break camp, however, they arrive at a clean site - which, in the case of a barren land Grizzly, is a lot better than the alternative.
The gulls, however, expressed their gratitude for my generosity by not bombing my campsite, so I didn't complain.
Happy Birthday, America!
The Chukchi had the right idea.
The rest of the kayaq may have been rather unstable without ballast of some sort, with it' v-shaped bottom, but the stern was a fantail design that lent itself to far better handling in a following sea than the conventional, and easier to build, traditional double ended configuration which today's recreational kayaks still use.
I'm glad I listened to the Elders. The region of the Kamchatka Penninsula is no place for mistakes, any more than the Arctic itself.
When I built this 15ft. 02 in. Arctic Hunting Kayaq for my youngest daughter, it incorporated the use of the Chukchi stern with the byforcated bow customarily used by the people of the regions where I grew up. It's spruce frame is tied together with nylon line soaked in very hot water, then allowed to cool and dry on the open frame before sealing it in acrylic resin. The soaked line pulls tight when tied, only just enough more when it dries to make a difference. It's not a lot, however, so there's no substitute for doing it right. The tighter you tie it, the better. I've also used rawhide soaked the same way, which tightens quite a lot when it dries, but only for kayaqs I build for museum pieces. The nylon lasts longer, and doesn't work loose again if it gets wet, once properly tied off.
The hull framework is then covered, for our purposes up North as both an insulation and for shock absorbing properties, with a half inch thick closed cell foam mat - nothing more, really, than some inexpensive sleeping mats for ground cover while camping. A 24 oz. ballistic cloth is stretched over the frame (a much lighter cloth could be used, depending upon the intended use for the boat - and whether it is intended for fresh or salt water exposure), and sewn together with nylon cord, then the entire fabric shell is sealed in several layers of a form of rubberized concrete sealant. The first layer is cut, or mixed with a thinner so it will soak into the fabric before drying, then the layers on hull and deck come afterward over several days. On this boat, I used seven layers after the first soaker, on the hull, and four on the deck. As the sealant is not that heavy after drying (the boat completed was barely over 35 pounds - and remember, this includes the wood frame, which in a Pacific Eskimo design totals 56 pieces of wood), more could be applied, especially on the hull. (I'm wearing my Poly Thermals in this shot, which takes my 158 lb. frame and makes me look like twice that! But believe me, they work, and I stay warm.)
This boat was built much stronger than it perhaps had to be, but it was started as a gift for my (then) 12 year old daughter, and I wanted it to last her. She's in her mid twenties now, has had the finished kayaq for several years, and refuses to part with it. And after how that design served her father, I can't say that I can blame her.
The first week of August found me back on the shoreline of the Beaufort, watching the Midnight Sun dip into the horizon that it had been trying to evade for several months. It was a reality check for me, because after several years of serving year round in an Arctic assignment prior, I knew firsthand what those winter months entailed.
And that I didn't have much time left to reach the Village of Kaktovik, my winter stopping point on Barter Island, Alaska. The first snow would make it's appearance in less than three weeks, and while I knew I was equipped to handle it, I also knew better than to tempt it.
My new boat was 19 ft. long, and built of fiberglass and epoxy resin with an Airex foam core - basic technology compared to what's out there now, but solid and much better against the abrasive sea ice. She is 28 inches wide, and drew barely 6 inches loaded with her full capacity load of just under 150 pounds (she could easily carry double that, but for reasons I will explain, I limit my load weight). I have a general rule of thumb when loading a kayaq, especially when I'm traveling alone - never load your boat with more weight than you can carry alone up a mountain slope for at least one mile, in any configuration you chose. For me as a Bush Alaskan, that weight includes a rifle, because I'm going into a region where I'm not on top of the food chain.
The double paddle is of solid Maine ash, with 3.5 inch wide blades nearly three feet long. Wood, because it feels better in the cold for a better grip, it's easier to maintain and repair in primitive conditions, and long without feathered blades because fat, short blades are useless in shallows, especially in muddy deltas that those kind of blades will scoop up, throwing the balance out and stressing the wrists. The long, narrow blades can skim the surface with more of their full blade surface area for power, with less drag and offer less windage aloft - helping stability.
The tent was double wall, domed and secured with ballistic bags that I could fill with beach sand and clip into the tent's peg rings with stainless steel clips. Pegs are useless along the coast of the arctic, especially in the frequent windy conditions I've been accustomed to camping in. I stow the tent in it's bag so the clips are at the opening, allowing me in any wind to secure the first corner clip to a full ballistic bag, then as the first shell of the tent is extracted from within it's bag, another clip is secured to the second bag, both into the wind. As the tent is pulled out, it is flattened and spread out into the wind and secured to the rest of the full bags until the entire tent shell is secured and ready to raise. The rain cover is extracted in the same manner, clipped onto the previous arrangement, again starting with the weather (wind) side first. In this manner, with practice, a tent can go up in better than 60 MPH winds without tangling or being lost.
As for you guys on the mountains, thank you for introducing me to Titinium hollow Ice Pegs - when I was stranded on the ice flow mentioned in the previous blog entry, those pegs worked, even with my stiff hands. They secured my camp in the same manner the ballistic bags did, and saved my life. I still carry them.
So the list will go on, as the blog does, each in it's turn. But however loaded, I still had to go to sea.
Once or twice, you can say it's coincidence and get away with it. When things keep coming together, however, in the small as well as the more difficult, you know Someone is making His presence know. And it's time to pay attention.
Another thing. Christians are too often viewed as arm chair Bible perusers out of step with life. Thumpers of the highest order when you want a rousing argument, but out of touch with what's going on around them, and afraid to live. Can't see what's out there, don't want to know, in their little world, thank you very much.
Reality Check.
I'm out there fighting well over 45 knot winds (that's 50+ mph, folks) blasting off of an ice field that's trying to cut me off from safe clear water and freezing the hide off my face, through a maze of shallow sand bars and no place to pull out. The season's far enough along that I've already weathered my first snow storm, things are getting serious and the ice is racing to claim me along the ranks of Franklin's crew.
No, Thank You.
The fan tail stern is lifting me like a duck over the twisting, following seas as they boil around me, and the deadrise in the slender hull allows my weight to settle comfortably low, with firm shoulders in the turn of the bilge of the hull lifting the kayaq comfortably through the crests. We're doing it.
But it's getting dark and looking ahead, I can barely see that the only way left through this mess is right through a churning mess of water standing on it's head, where the current is colliding with itself only a half mile in front of me. Not a pretty picture.
And the ice has cut off my retreat.
Again, just when I'm realizing I'm going to be spending the night in this fiberglass cocoon, I come alongside a miracle - a tiny calm lee tucked away into the sand bar of Aray Island, almost invisible in the twilight.
You use what you have, and it proved just enough. Warm soup, warm bed - I could see the lights of the village ahead coming on for the night - but it wouldn't be mine tonight. But the lee worked, and at least I was out of the storm. I learned once in the village, that the roofs were blowing off of the construction projects being built before winter set in.
And I was out kayaqing in it.
A flat calm bay awaited me the next morning, however. The snow flakes grew so large and thick that I couldn't see more than a kayaq length ahead of me by the time I had my bearings and had shoved off. But it cleared an hour later, revealing my direction to be true, and leading me into the channel around Barter Island.
Have you ever been in a place so featureless, yet so enchantingly wonderful, that it fades into a continuous landscape like being within a picture in a frame, surrounded in a world without any seams? You feel like you're on a small pond, all you can see is the little patch of water around you - yet you're paddling forward, watching the bank, but it doesn't ever seem to move or open up to anywhere - you're just there, in a little pond following you in the middle of all this tundra, wondering if it will ever end.
Then you notice, way off, a little log of some kind, and gradually a way opens to set you free. And the world makes sense again.
But no one when you return to the South understands why you have an attitude, because you have nothing to say, when they want to know so much.
When there's nothing in their life to relate to, how do you explain? And when you try, they just don't get it.
Finally, you adjust to some degree, but once you learn to move with the rhythm of God's creations you are never the same. Being a real Christian is that way. It's not an attitude, it's a way of life, through life, no matter what comes.
Just like the ice. Always calling you.
Always real.
-WKD
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