kayaks from
Scratch
Adventure Kayak’s BEGINNER’S GUIDE
Your Own Boat By Conor Mihell
to Building
Josh Thomas admits that he came to wooden kayak building with naive
reluctance. Tomas, a sea kayak guide from Seward, Alaska, and his Washington, D.C.- based filmmaker friend J.J. Kelley, chose to build their own stitch-and-glue plywood sea kayaks for their 2,000-kilometre expedition from Alaska to Seattle. Te plan was to save a few bucks and add another dimension to an experience they hoped to develop into a feature-length film. “We wanted something that would add
depth to the story and look good on camera,” says Tomas, who rushed through the con- struction of the boats in an unheated garage in the chilly Alaskan spring. “Our big concern was whether or not such beautiful, fragile- looking boats would be durable enough for a long expedition.” After more than three months on the wa-
ter, the eye-catching boats that play a starring role in Kelley and Tomas’ award-winning Paddle to Seattle film (watch the preview at
www.reelpaddlingfilmfestival.com) showed few signs of heavy use. “We hit a lot of rocks and crash-landed on
many beaches,” says Tomas. “We did all we could to avoid looking at the bottoms of the boats because we were afraid of what we’d find. Tere were some scratches, but every- thing was superficial. We made no repairs over the course of the trip.” To build your own kayak is to take part in
a 4,000-year-old tradition beginning when the first Inuit hunter pieced together drift- wood and sealskin and took to the Arctic sea. Te process can be as simple or as complex as you like, ranging from assembling pre-cut pieces of a stitch-and-glue kit to creating a museum-quality craft of strips of cedar.
www.adventurekayakmag.com 31
PHOTO: BEAR MOUNTAIN BOATS
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