Takapu has found a new opportunity

Takapu has found a new opportunity.















He is returning to Auckland and the Waitemata Harbour. His new owner has plans to resurrect him to his traditional form.









Takapu is 6.9 meters long from tip to tip and weighs around 100 kg. The hull and deck is constructed of three diagonal skins of Sapele Mahogany veneer laminated with West System Epoxy.





















Ama is strip plank cedar sheathed with West Epoxy and 8oz glass weighing approximately 30kg. Primed with two pack epoxy primer.























The steering dagger board rudders are 30 mm 7 ply Meranti sheathed with S glass and epoxy and finished in graphite impregnated West Epoxy.

















The boards are bi directional, ogive section.


If you want to learn more about these hydrofoil boards please follow the link where Tim Anderson explains my system better than I can
.
http://web.media.mit.edu/%7Etim/pix/2004_nz/50_nz_4-15-04/_nz13.html

In Limbo

The best sailing summer that I can remember and I am no closer to finishing Toroa.
Work commitments and ill health limit my activities.
I have made some modifications to my Coleman canoe as promised and I can now row from a central position after some changes to the central alli tube spreader which is now a third thwart.
I have a pair of 8 foot oars which are mounted through rowlock wings made from aluminium channel extended by 300 mm from the gunwale bolted through the alli side strake. The last remaining project is the yawl rig for which I have accumulated the sail fabric, the masts and steps and some rope.
Photos to come.

I've also built a cajon drum and have begun to assemble a small drum kit to extend my musical opportunities in our new community in Rawene.

http://harmensmusicblog.blogspot.com/

Takapu awaits a new opportunity.













photo by Russ Brown 2003


Takapu at his winter retreat, Shelly Beach Herne Bay Auckland
The owner of Takapu at the time this image was taken has approached me and we have agreed on a way to get Takapu sailing again.

Harmen

Equinox, gale force wind, freezing hail! Spring's here.

Julie and I have moved from Waima.


We swapped our home of five years with people whose roots are in Waima. Their house in the little township of Rawene suited our needs and was similar in value. Now we live within one minute's walking distance to my work at Hokianga Hospital. No more car commuting!

Our new house looks out over the inner Hokianga Harbour so I'm back in touch with the pulse of the tide.

We moved in a convoy of small vehicles the 16 KM (12 miles) in the pouring rain one day in June
with lots of help from our friends.

I hooked up Toroa to the car on his road trailer and said goodbye to the place whare he was rebuilt.

I was alone in the car as we drove the Waima hill and descended into the Omanaia valley. All was going well until we came to the Rawene intersection from State Highway 12. at the turn, the right hand trailer tire burst.

I decided to proceed slowly on the rim, not having a spare to fit. A scene from that great Roger Donaldson film "The World's Fastest Indian" came to mind

The ride was a further 6 KM at 5 KM per hour, I was The World's Slowest Pakeha!

Flump, flump, flump, flump, wobble, wobble, wobble, It was slow noisy progress and to top it all off the car began to overheat. The cooling fans decided to go out in protest. Rovers are very self conscious cars and don't like drawing attention to themselves.

As we rolled past my place of work all my colleagues came to the roadside to jeer at me attracted as they were by my appalling progress. We finally pulled in to our driveway where I disconnected the trailer and left Toroa exactly where he stood.... until yesterday.

Over the three month gap Julie and I have established ourselves in our new environment. Last weekend I finished setting up my workshop with my wood tools on one side and my engineering tools on the other.
My saw bench is in its rightful place outside the workshop with enough undercover space around it to do some real work again.

With my now accessible tools I've unbolted the offending wheel and cut off the mangled tire from the rim. I took the wheel to our nearby garage where I asked the mechanic to fit a recycled tire which I found in the fill behind a retaining wall where my saw bench is now located. So I still don't know what's good and what's bad. Now I'm able to mobilise myself for another assault on the summer sailing opportunities.

My health is still not so good with my right wrist and ankle so swollen that I believe they will never be useful again. Just as well that I have a left hand and a left ankle that are still reasonably OK. (OK?
I think that "OK" must be derived from the Scottish "Och Aye") it has to be.

Toroa still needs a good water blast and also a coat of gloss paint. Who knows when that will happen?

Money's tight everywhere. Where did it all go? Rescuing the US economy?

Meanwhile I'm going to convert our little red Coleman canoe to every form of propulsion known to small boats. A yawl rig, row locks and outboard bracket, that way when I'm sick I can still go boating with minimal stress physically.

Han's Comment on my blog post "Takapu the Proa a Dissertation"

Hi Han

I read about the Gondola in a "Wooden Boat Magazine" article many years ago. Since then I have wanted to study one closely, in action, to see what other benefits there may be from the asymmetry.

From my experience with the Proa I have learned that good design (especially design features with a long successful history) usually solves at least three problems at once.

I believe that this hull shape could simply offset the thrust of the oar but I believe that the answer may not be so simple, it may also have a more fundamental reason. One reason will almost certainly be the need for extra buoyancy over the side that the oarsman stands, on this long slender hull, to keep the boat level for the comfort of passengers.

Another will be the need to counteract a tendency that long slender hulls have to broaching. My experience with long symmetrical canoe hulls is that they have a strong tendency to track off course when a small force acts across the line of least resistance, i.e. wind or wave action. I believe the reason for this broaching action is the result of a pressure differential that gets started when the hull turns through the flow and water speeds up around the outside of the turning circle. This in turn generates lift which exacerbates the turning moment into a logarithmic spiral. The result is almost impossible to correct with any kind of lateral counter force like a long sweep or paddle (a disastrous situation in the congested busy waterways of Venice!).

With an asymmetric hull the pressure differential is constant and therefore more predictable for the oarsman to counteract. Lastly I believe that the oarsman exerts a slight diagonal force in the thrust sweep of his oar which results in lift from the rounded side of the hull. This thrust/lift combination in turn reduces the amount of effort required to move the hull through the water, the same phenomenon that a fish utilises when swimming.

Re rudderless steering.

The Patin Catala of Spain is a great example which has evolved into a very successful sailing class.  http://woodenboat.com/boat/?p=1358

Best

Harmen

2 answers to 2 good questions

Dave ? contacted me with a question asking for me to elaborate on aspects of my sail construction spar materials and tack connection. He also wanted to learn more about the Kiribati Dimple and its effect.

My brown "Novathene" Polytarp sail is laid up with the warp and weft at 45 degrees to an imaginary straight line along the leach between the two spar tips. This orientation allows the fabric to distort freely in both directions, across the sail and down its length, opening up the leech and at the same time accommodating the variable luff curvature induced by the flex in the luff spar and boom without adversely affecting sail shape. The loose bias of this cloth shears and stretches to create a surprisingly fair curve with no induced shape sewn into the panels as we see in a modern sail.

The two spars are made from 4 scavenged windsurfer (sailboard) masts.
The luff spar is constructed with a sleeve joining the bases of two of the fibre glass masts resulting in the tapers running out to the tips top and bottom.
The boom is one mast sleeved into the other with the tapered end to the clew. The angle of intersection at the tack is 60 degrees making the sail roughly an equilateral triangle though to be traditional the Micronesians make their booms slightly longer that the main hull and the luff spar and mast slightly shorter and of roughly equal length.

You will notice that there no empirical rules in any of my commentary only a "rule of thumb" which irritates purists and control types terribly, this rule of thumb also applies to the hull shape.

I have made my connection between luff spar and boom at the tack connect by means of a very small jaw made of marine ply scarfed into the tube section of  the boom which forms an open crutch against the luff spar. The jaw is held in place by the luff and foot tension exerted by the sail when it is bent on with  all its supporting lashings to the boom.

I'll illustrate these details when I have more time.

I'm not to sure how I can expand any further on the Kiribati Dimple idea if it is not made clear from my chapter in my dissertation with comments contributed by some true experts in my later posts on the subject.

There is no science yet to support my hypothesis on the subject of hull asymmetry. I can only speak from experience the publication of which again has left my ideas open to derision and doubt from some surprisingly bright people.

"Hull asymmetry takes various forms throughout the Pacific. In Micronesia, where it was most highly developed, the backbone of the canoe is bent in two directions during construction. In other instances keels are straight but sides are built with parabolic cross sections, one side made rounder than the other and featuring a shallow concave indentation in the lee side of the hull below the waterline. Michael Toy designed the hulls Takapu and Toroa with this feature. He understood that asymmetric hull curvature works as a hydrofoil designed to counteract leeway. My personal experience is that, as the vessel gathers speed, it begins to make ground to windward to the extent that I always have to head below my objective so as not to over shoot the mark."

I drew this illustration showing the sections of the hull of Takapu.
The sections are derived from the plans as drawn in 1977 by Mike Toy. The keel is straight, the volume of the windward side is perhaps twice that of the leeward.

You will see that section 5, the mid bulkhead frame is narrower than the preceding section 4 (and following section six, remembering that the hull is a mirror of itself end to end)

I now also believe that the dimple reduces drag by mitigating the secondary, lee side shock wave and the feature also assists with maintaining directional stability in a following sea.

How much asymmetry? Not too much and not too little!

Takapu the model: fish eye view

Holling Clancy Holling and me

 This post seems a long way off topic, however because of the relevance of Holling C Holling to my early development as an artist and sailor I've also chosen to put this up on my art blog as well.

Holling Clancy Holling and me.

On my 7th Birthday my Grandfather, Henk Oostenrijk from the Netherlands, sent me a book voucher.

My Mother and Father took me to a bookstore in Auckland City where I chose “Seabird,” a beautiful, hard cover book for children written and illustrated by Holling Clancy Holling and published by Collins on the subject of Whaling. My Mother dedicated the book for me by writing my birth date and my Grandfather’s name on the flyleaf.

I no longer have that original copy. It was donated without my knowledge or approval to a local school, fundraising book auction when my children were still attending primary school.

It did solve my Father’s problem of what to give me for my 8th birthday. My obsession that year with “Seabird” gave him the cue. I received from him a copy of “Paddle to the Sea.”

The following year it was “Tree in the Trail”

http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=fjLWevyUu0cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=seabird+Holling+Clancy+Holling&source=gbs_similarbooks_s&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Those three books changed my life forever. Long before I fully appreciated the literary contents of those books I was gazing in awe at Holling’s illustrations, many of which I copied. Not only that, I began to build my own canoes, models at first and then, on to the real thing.

Like Holling, I had a curiosity about many things and this lead to an interest in the canoes and the people of the Pacific Ocean.

I was compelled to make sailing models of outrigger canoes, whittled out of the dry, woody flowering stems of the flax plant that flourishes in the coastal areas of New Zealand. My friends and I would send them racing across the bay and watch them diminish, longingly, wondering where they might eventually end up, as they dwindled from sight; out to sea.

My first real canoe was designed by New Zealand designer, Frank Pelin and built to his plans by my father and me. That canoe was a 15 foot, plywood, hard chine adaptation of an American Indian birch bark canoe. I named that canoe “Seabird,” the canoe taught me about boat handling from a very young age. I used two types of paddle, the double Eskimo kayak style and the other, the traditional single paddle. My friends and I cruised the sheltered local waterways north of Auckland where we fished and camped all summer long.

Again much influenced by Holling’s realist style and parallel to his path, I chose a career as a commercial graphic artist and mural painter, which eventually lead to sculpture as well. These activities, though not my true passion, helped me to put food on the table for my family.

As I write this I am now in my 50’s and I still cherish and collect copies of Holling’s work. I haunt the children’s section of secondhand bookshops and charity shops always on the lookout for another, yet unseen Holling publication. In this way I have found a 1935 first edition of  “The Book of Indians” a later Collins republication of the same title and a 1948 first edition Houghton Mifflin copy of “Seabird”.

My continuing curiosity about Holling lead me to Walt Giersbach’s blog which seeks to illuminate that which was previously unknown about the life and work of Holling C. Holling and his wife Lucille. Now, thanks to the efforts of people like Joan Hoffman of Michigan and others, details and artifacts from Holling’s life are being collected, displayed, recorded and published so that more may benefit from Holling’s rich legacy, the body of work that he left for our benefit and enjoyment.

Thanks Holling C Holling for daring to follow your dream and so influence the lives of people like me so far away here in New Zealand.

Joan Hoffman, Holling’s biographer wrote me recently:

August 2010

Harmen,

Glad you made contact with Walt.

You and Holling would have had much in common. He had an early interest in canoeing and became very skilled at it. In the Holling Collection is one of his early drawings of a horse drawn at age three.

Holling became a bit better off financially after he wrote and illustrated Paddle-to-the-Sea and the four Houghton Mifflin Co. books that followed (Tree in the Trail, Seabird, Minn of the Mississippi and Pagoo). Before that he did a great deal of advertising and commercial art to put food on the table. He even worked for Walt Disney at times for a pay check. The children's books he wrote before Paddle were done as a sideline. There are about 20+ books Holling either wrote and illustrated or others he illustrated for other authors.

Holling was a talented writer as well as an artist. He wrote some poetry. One of his great assets was a supportive wife. She helped in so many ways. And he had an outgoing personality and could talk with young and old in all walks of life. He had a curiosity about many things.

You won't see any of Holling's work after Pagoo (published in 1957), although he lived until 1973. Unfortunately he developed Parkinson's with dementia. He worked on several other ideas but never completed them.

Joan Hoffman

Winter at Waima

Toroa has come out of the water and is now resting on his trailer at home.

Julie and have not yet resolved our house sale. This problem occupies much of our time and energy. There is also a 4 m3 pile of firewood to split, I've just now come inside from a session with my axe and after a hot bath it's time to relate a little of what's been happening.

Toroa sat at anchor in the tidal stream of the Waima River mouth near the tip of the Rawene peninsula for the better part of 4 months. Without anti fouling paint of any kind he needed regular bottom scrubs. As a result there are now several large oysters that have glued themselves very firmly to the bottom in the few places that missed the regular scrub. Before Toroa goes back in the water some kind of antifouling paint will need to be applied. My new summer mooring location will dry out for part of the tide cycle so a hard type antifouling paint suits that situation best. Then there are the graphics that I have designed which must also be applied before his next outing. The next time Toroa goes in the water it will be his official launch. There will be a proper Maori ceremony attended by a local Kaumatua.

Overall I'm pretty happy with Toroa. I only wish that I did not suffer such a physically disabling disease.
Rheumatoid arthritis is very debilitating when all the major joints swell up. This inflammation makes doing anything strenuous unbelievably painful. The problem is worst in my shoulders, hands, fingers and wrists.

The doctors and specialists are not very positive about my prognosis and are trying to convince me to take strong medication in the form of Predisone and Methotrexate. The contraindications for these drugs on the face of it look worse than my symptoms.

I need to do much more research before I make a choice to go down that path.

When I look inwardly I can't help but feel that the R.A. that I suffer from may be a disease that manifests itself in a mindset of resentment, there are thousands of theories around what causes the disease but no one knows for sure!

This is somewhat off topic I know but I want to share with you just what is going on.

I really appreciate the interest that you are showing in my Canoes of Oceania blog. I'm surprised by the number of people that are following my irregular postings.

It's interesting to read about your various blogs and activities, I want to encourage some of you to share more of yourselves in your profiles.

Just recently Julie and I attended a student showing of short films on the subject of Kaimanakitanga.
Roughly translated this means our treasures of knowledge.

Janine McVeigh a local writer and educator chose my work with Toroa as the subject for her 3 minute film. We felt honoured to be the subject of this kind of documentation and we enjoyed the showing of 9 very different short films at the local campus of Northtech, our Northland Polytechnic. These films covered diverse material such as genealogy, Water, conservation, Native forest, etc. The little film titled "Following my Heart"will be loaded on to Youtube and will be linked here on my blog as well.

Janine wants to dedicate more time to this project and plans to feature Toroa in a documentary in which we hope to include some video footage of Toroa sailing.

It's time to get some more real proa footage out there for more of you to view.

Whilst writing this I received a phone call from Gary Dierking who just got back from a month long canoe sailing trip in Fiji with his wife Rose.  It's good to be in touch with you again Gary, we've missed you.

Well It's time for me to help get an evening meal together. The weather has closed in and the wind has turned to the south which means cold and wet for us.

Bye for now

Harmen