Ted,
Thought you might be interested in this. During January I was on an oceanographic research cruise to the Antarctic Peninsula. We left from Punta Arenas, Chile, and crossed the Drake Passage between Chile and the Antarctic Peninsula. We stopped at Palmer Station, a US base on the southern tip of Anvers Island and then worked our way south sampling along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. We stopped in at Rothera Base, the southern-most base on the Peninsula, which is run by the British Antarctic Survey (It is well south of the Antarctic Circle). We spent 2 days there.
Walking from the pier to the main buildings of Rothera Base, I passed a number of “mill vans”, which are large metal containers used to ship supplies to the base. They are about 20’ long by 8’ wide by 8’ high and are essentially just a metal box, one end of which is a large door. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that two of the vans contained cedarstrip canoes (Redbirds) under construction. I couldn’t believe it and immediately wondered how they built them in such a cold climate in unheated vans. How did they get the wood there? How did they cut the strips? How would they get them back to Britain?
I finally met one of the builders, Rayne Piper. The bought Canadian western red cedar boards in the UK and then shipped them to the Base disguised as building material. They had originally planned to build 6 canoes (using your original Canoecraft as a guide), but the bandsaw at the Base was not up to cutting the strips, so they ended up cutting them with a hand held CIRCULAR SAW! For glue they were using an adhesive called screwfix. It’s a polyurethane glue (and they were using way too much). For fibreglassing they used West system epoxy and did heat they container using a dry air heater borrowed from the aircraft hanger (they have a runway at Rothera). They used a loose weave cloth (they did not look that good). They are sending the boats home in the crate that the wood came in.
Apparently canoe building has turned into a real craze there (they have lots of free time). I told them about your revised canoecraft and also about Kayakcraft. I thought the area around the Base would be ideal for sea kayaks. I offered to send them copies of both books, buy they get to choose two books each for the base library and they were going to choose both of them.
Anyway, I thought you might like to hear that your techniques are being used successfully in Antarctica. Let me know if you want any more details.
Best wishes,
Gene Burreson
