I smile every time I think of Ken - that man was def one of the good ones! I'm really thankful for being around guys like him and Rusty when I was young and impressionable!

I'm a fan of lamination (the waka and ama are laminated in s-glass and I'd have it no other way)... but I've seen a lot of parts rot from the inside--out, and other parts self destruct when moisture migrates in and the wooden substrate swells, splitting the laminations, so I try to be judicious about it. In the case of my failed ioko, I blame my poor wood selection more than anything else. I sacraficed strength for weight in a critical place where more strength is clearly necessary. I don't know if this wa'a layout will survive planned revisions, but if they do then I am going to inlet hardwood dowels into them and call them sufficiently reinforced. I'd prefer to be even lighter (most decisions on this boat came down to weight-conciousness), so if they fail again I'll make them from okoume or hoop pine ply, or carbon fiber with no wooden cores at all. Manuiki'iki is 21' long and I can pick him up by myself - and I'm not getting any younger 😂

Yup... Nearly every structural failure I see during a restoration is associated with metal fasteners allowing moisture in over time... with modern adhesives and laminate techniques there is far less reason to use metal fasteners, which no matter how well protected or maintained will eventually fail. 🌲⛵️🌲

Yeah, I've seen them used in the Texas 200 and the Everglades Challenge and they look like a great idea.

I have a saying: "I aim for adventure, but I'll settle for misadventure." There's something so much more invigorating about the unexpected!

It was so funny to drive thousands of miles, for days and days, and then to see y'all on the side of the road. What's even funnier is that even with your helmets on I recognized you!!! Going to do this again in September... I have all the ducks lined up!

I just finished it. Man… talk about LIVING!!!! You’ve ALWAYS marched to the beat of your own drum, even if you are the only one, who heard it’s rhythmic beating. That’s what I’ve always admired about you. From the times we were just small kids in the Boys Home! I have ZERO doubt, you WILL make this trip, and make it on YOUR terms! Look forward to the next installment! Maybe we could meet up again. This time planned…. on your way to Clays.

@@R3215T3R Thank you, JJ! I really appreciate your kind words- it means a lot to me! It would be great to see you somewhere other than on the side of Hwy 17 - I have the next attempt on the books for this September (b/c of course I should reattempt in hurricane season) so when I'm packing I'll ping you!

Yeah, but Skin died when she went off a cliff on a horse drawn wagon in Nevada, so we can't really trust her judgement, now can we? This trip was actually fun in many ways.... but unfulfilling. My next attempt is now only 9 months from now 🤣 Thank you!

Thank you, @jpsuperstar! The GA coast is magical to me and I'm glad you enjoyed! I'm already planning my next attempt for May of 2024 - I hope I can get that video done in less time than this one took!! 🤣😂.

Not a single mosquito bite!

Thank you! September cometh... plans are afoot!

I was never in any real danger - just the danger of excessive discomfort, the kind you can't really plan for.

Ping me in the Springtime! I'm a glutton for misadventure!

Thank you, Chris! That means a lot, especially coming from a man of your talents!!!

Thank you! Yeah, def seen his shunting proa (I follow him). It's a design I haven't played with, but may, someday. Kinda like that Wharram he restored. My favorite proa story is by a man who moved to Mexico, built a proa, taugh himself how to sail it, then sailed down the coast to Panama - it's a fantastic read: grillabongquixotic.wordpress.com/

Thank you for your kind words! I'd love a Wharram cat - but my big-boat days are on hold for now - I've spent far too much of my life on haul outs and bottom paint, already! The goal of this next trip will be the same as in the video: Sail from island to island, staying on each; no transit to be more than 10 or 12 miles. I have great sailing out here in the Salish Sea, but I do not have the Gullah Coast - it is a timeless, ever-changing, introspective, and primitive place. Sand and all 🤣

Thank you! Cheers! Been stewing on the changes to get ready!!!

🤩

The softness of the sand on the Gullah coast definitely belies the danger to boats of every size and mode... this wasn't my first time getting my ass handed to me here, that's for sure! It won't be the last, either. I used dyneema on purpose - I always have a variety of lines and methods for repair and lashing, but in that case what I wanted to use was something that wasn't going to loosen when the sun warmed it and something that could resist moisture... a larger diameter would've resisted pulling itself into the wood, but that was the size I had. Ideally the wa'a wouldn't have been so fragile in the first place! I'm fixing that- overkill on the structure isn't overkill, so overkill is coming. What kind of tri did you transit on? I just picked up a Windrider 17 and a buddy just got two of the 16's... I'm sorely tempted to do the R2AK in the 17... I have over 1500 days at sea sailing on container ships and I've felt very, very tiny out there, even on 1,000 foot ships... if you don't feel vulnerable when you're in the ocean then you simply don't understand where you are, or you lack the imagination to comprehend the many ways you can die, or you lack the experience of enough close-calls to keep you perpetually second-guessing your every move.

@@Forrest-Jackson Windriders are pretty bulletproof for what they are. I have a buddy in his 80s that sold his 17 and picked up a 16 as the 16 is so simple to set up and be on the water in minutes. From what I hear, the lack of a centerboard makes them to point very well. From a nonmototized distance race perspective, they paddle like a dog if you're becalmed. Super fun vessels, but I don't know that they're well-suited for a R2AK. I bought plans for a Slingshot 19. They're at home in skinny waters like the Gulf and Outer Banks, but a bit fragile on bigger seas. Also not a good fit for R2AK type conditions. My current iteration vaguely resembles the initial build. She still folds for trailering, but she's rigged with two mast steps to accept either a Hobie 16 sailplan or a RSS balanced lug. The Hobie yields the best peak performance, but the balanced lug can average higher on longer trips. Just so much simpler to deal with a single sheet and sail, and reefing underway isn't a death defying exercise single-handed. From a sailing perspective, I'm a noob with about 8 years of sailing, most of which is small homebuilt vessels. Hoping to build a 13 meter trimaran (or buy an older one and modify it) to do some bluewater.

Thank you!

For now... September will be here soon! That's when this particular journey will continue... I guess the destination is kind of like spaghetti being thrown against a refrigerator... at some point in the journey it'll stick.

Thanks! The next installment will be me correcting the current deficiencies and adding some new ones :-D I'm in complete agreement with you... I would have definitely enjoyed more sailing in this video, and less of me getting my ass kicked. I'll work very hard to make the next attempt (May of 2024) more in line with our mutual desire, for sure. I'll be retiring the curved iokos (and yes, making them longer) and stretching the ama. Probably doing some PNW winter trials in my dry suit, too (if I can find the time - I have three large projects underway at the moment). Thanks for the subscribe! I've been watching your canoes for awhile now and dig your channel - Thank you for sharing @dominictarrsailing!

Me too!

I appreciate the offer! You're clearly a kindred spirit! My rebuild has gone nowhere past the planning phase, but I've gathered materials and now I need a window of time to act - my schedule is still a wall of work preventing me from this labor of love. I'm tempted to do a shakedown of the revised Manuiki'iki on Baker Lake this Spring/Summer/As-soon-as-possible. The revisions I am making are to convert the curved iokas to longer, strait spars of sitka spruce giving them the athwartship proportions more akin to the Marshallese canoes - I want to keep the weight as low as possible while at the same time make moving fore and aft easier in any sea state. I'm also going to add a manufactured kickup rudder and simplify the steering, add a simple boomless polytarp main to carry for days when dousing is critical to survival... and, of course, set off again ASAP.

@@Forrest-Jackson Baker Lake is my Valhalla Vortex. I have several videos of some sailing up there over the past several years - before my shoulders and back said, "enough". I took them down off my channel, but if you're interested, I'll re-post them and share the link. If further interested, I can meet you there at some point and be the chase/photo/video boat....and chief heckler. I'll bring the cooler.

Link to one video up at Baker lake ukposts.info/have/v-deo/hHeDp5CqnoF0yIk.html

I'll def respond here if this is going to happen! Love the video - last time I was on that lake it was fantastic!

@@Forrest-Jackson I'm always ready.

Thank you for your kind words! And you're right... mother nature will knock the cocky right out of the disrespectful soul! My most memorable voyages are the ones I undertook before I had enough experience to know better... if I were a more timid man I think I'd never leave the dock again after some of the storms I've weathered (45' seas in the North Atlantic and a near capsize in the Philippine Sea come immediately to mind). I'd love to sail around the Bahamas, one day! I tip my hat to you, sir! I spent years as a merchant sailor and I have many wonderful memories from snorkelling and boating in both the lagoon and ocean sides of Kwajalein Atoll, and the comparable oceans and harbors of Guam and Saipan. But those waters - some of the ancestoral waters to a few of the mulit-hull canoes - simply cannot be compared to the waters of Coastal Georgia. The GA coast has Gray's Reef as a breakwater, super shallow and ever-changing sand seabeds with many protective 'long-shore sandbars, and a wide tidal range that make the near coastal Georgia waters more similar to an inland sea (or lagoon) than to open ocean. I've seen larger swells, waves, tidal ranges, and current velocities here - where I live now - in the Salish Sea (Puget Sound, Strait of Juan De Fuca, and Georgia Strait) than in near coastal Georgia's "open ocean." Don't get me wrong - those soft sand shores are a shipwreck graveyard when weather hits, but that's not when experienced sailors operate. Each body of water I've spent time in has its own characteristics... hell, its own personality - and of all the waters I have had the fortune to know, I like Georgia's Guale Coast's personality the most. And Manu'iki'iki was designed specifically for gliding through zephyr shadows over sandbars at low tide, pushed by the onshore morning breeze. What I got in this video was a nasty, stalled northerly, of course, and an all you can eat buffet of humble pie!!! I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the many, many different canoes of the world, too. From Bab El Mandeb at the mouth of the Red Sea where it dumps into the Indian Ocean all the way to the Galapagos in far eastern Pacific, I have seen canoes of every shape, size, description, and use. I've seen canoes in open oceans, inner and outer seas, lagoons, rivers... I saw two fishermen in a 20 foot canoe throwing nets 150 miles off the coast of Somalia. The canoes of Sri Lanka are ocean going, as are the racing jukung of Tahiti. The Philippine fishing boats of all sizes go out to fish in unbelievable conditions. The Aleuts take their kayaks into the open ocean to fish and the forefoot design is meant to race down the face of ocean swells. All of the Polynesian war canoes were ocean canoes used for warfare between island nations (Samoa, Hawaii, Chamorro, etc). These are open, long, narrow, fast, and uncomfortable canoes that surf the face of following swells. Your advise about an outboard does not fall on deaf ears. I left my electric/solar outboard at the dock for this voyage and I will NOT do that again! I will be making it a much more integral component on my planned upgrades for my next voyage! During my evaluation (at the end of the video) I had a difficult current to fight against when I was heading back in and having that extra juice was the difference between being forced to wait for slack tide and eating dinner at a decent hour. I will almost always choose to eat at a decent hour 🤣 Anyway, thanks again for watching and sharing your thoughts!

🤣🤣🤣

Multihulls are ancient and the most far-flung of all boats... they've crossed every ocean and continue to do so. I've seen them from the Marquesas, all through the Pacific - Micronesia to Polynesia - into the Indian Ocean and the Bengal Sea, off the coast of Sri Lanka to Bab El Mandeb... north and south of the equator. The Philippine fishermen are some of the most fearless sailors in the world in dugout canoes with outriggers... they routinely go through incredible bar breakers and rough seas as routine. The fault here wasn't the type of boat, it was a poor design choice by the builder (me). I'll tighten up the design for the next go-round...

Hmmm. What makes you say that?

The idea that you are either alive or you are safe can be perfectly encapsulated by the diametrically opposed vessel trade-offs of a shallow draft and the ability for one man to move, lift, and carry it, or an armored, steel battleship of a thing and weight-be-damned. I don't seek to change your mind (pointless), but perhaps I can recommend to you a great read by a man who took a 16' proa, "Desperado," from the east coast of Mexico to Panama via the near coastal route: grillabongquixotic.wordpress.com His philosophy of what constitutes a journey, what one man needs to survive, and his total disregard of what the casual bystander on the shore thinks as he sails on by is... inspiring. Perhaps Chris' blog can explain better than I can what it feels like to be alive. Good luck in all your endeavors.

Having "just a tad of maritime knowledge" is knowing that this is not a proa.