CATEFORY: SAILING

One morning when we were anchored in a sheltered cove in Desolation Sound, a tiny man in a tiny kayak approached us from a conversely large ketch anchored not far away.  The kayak was so small it looked like it was made of stretch nylon that he had pulled onto himself like wiggling into a girdle.  It couldn’t have been more than six ft. long.  Furthermore, it had almost no freeboard.  Before he said anything to us, I quipped, “Is that boat really floating”?  He smiled slyly and said with a distinct British accent, “I do hope so.”  I said, “I think you’re treading water underneath.”  He just twinkled.  He looked like Barry Fitzgerald, but his name was “Twink” Rodd.  He invited us to his boat for morning tea.  Of course we accepted and rowed over in our own tiny craft: our dinghy.  His boat was so large we had to climb a ladder to get aboard.  Twink, standing upright on the deck to greet us, was only about five ft. tall.  He introduced us to his wife and another couple.  They were all wonderfully hospitable: typical of the Brits we had met.

Twink told us that he was a builder of ferro cement boats and his own was one of them.  I saw Bob’s eyes dart to the edge of the hull appraisingly.  It was the first I had heard of cement boat hulls.  He told us more about cement boats, and then invited us to visit his home in Sidney.  He said it was near his boat yard and that he would give us a tour of the works.  We told him it would not be for another week or so.  He answered using that Brit term, “Early days!”

When we got to Sidney, we called and were invited to lunch, after which he drove us to his boat building establishment.  It was a huge yard with several warehouse type buildings.  Inside, there were hulls in different stages of construction.  He showed us how layers of chicken wire were formed and wired together over a wood mold and then covered with ferro cement shot from a gun out of a tube.  The difficult part was finishing the exterior which had to be as smooth as fiberglass.  There were also some wood hulls under construction, so his was a versatile establishment.  I asked him about his little kayak.  He told me it was one he had built in his garage.  He said that building kayaks was “only a hobby,” and that it was a challenge to see how small he could make them.  I think he had reached the epitome of smallness in both height and length.