Outrigger Canoe Sailing in
New
Zealand spring 2004
Trip Log, Photos, and
Digressions
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The
road to
Coromandel hugs the base of the coastal cliffs that line the gulf. Not
an easy place to see a hitchhiker in time and not many places wide
enough to stop and pick one up. A lot of walking and a few rides
later I got to Coromandel. "Do you know Gary Dierking?" I asked the
first person I met. "He's just down the road. Hold on and I'll give him
a call." she said. It's a small town.
After the formalities he took me for a spin in "Ulua", the 18ft
outrigger canoe he builds. Zipping along with a tiny outboard.
The wind came up, we put up the crabclaw sail, and I got a chance to
sail.
The rudder is next to the outboard on a bracket on the aka. It's
well-behaved and easy to manage. The boat I mean.
Ulua pulled up on shore, The larger canoe Te Wa ("The Boat") anchored
out.
He's a prolific designer of multihulls, lived aboard and cruised, lived
on various pacific islands for a long time.
Good details on some of his recent small craft are here:
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/garyd
He's designed and built far more than is shown on the site and taken it
through the rough stuff. Trust him.
Te Wa is written up in this issue of multihulls mag, this link is the
table of contents of the issue:
http://www.multihullsmag.com/magazine/OldMags/jan-feb-2000.htm
We watched the scenery and an episode of "Prime Suspect" an excellent
British whodunit.
We discussed the great issues of our time and ancient times. In the
process we drew many diagrams of sails, hulls, and fluid flows.
It was a pleasure to "help" Gary make a couple of items to get the
canoe ready. He displays a very high ratio of production to motion.
Somehow he completes his tasks very rapidly without rushing. That must
be the sign of a master. No wasted motion.
Water birds near his house. He's surrounded by oyster farms, which
means clean water.
His house is
on the site of an old gold mine, but the area seems to have recovered.
The next day Gary showed me around the area. We went to a little museum
in a nearby town.
Small museums are better than big ones. They have just as many
artifacts, you can get closer to them, and you don't have to walk as
far.
An interesting brace and bit with an offset top handle. It's probably
harder to start than the usual kind and probably drills better once the
feed screw bites in.
A flax cutter, used to chunk the stalks. The hook pries against a
staple set in a log.
At some point I realized or was told that I was passing dairy farms. A
big surprise because I saw no barns or silos.The climate makes them
unnecessary. The grass grows all year so there's no need to ferment it
in a silo. The climate is mild so the stock don't need shelter in a
barn or hay from the haymaw. My dairying relatives should move here.
All you need are some acres, some cows, and a milking machine. No
bother with fodder, barns, or half the implements. The most complicated
amenity is a raised grating for the cows to stand on and dry their
hooves in wet weather.
The scythes are set up with the blade at a different angle than my
relatives use. Maybe because these are for use on steep hills and my
relatives are on flat land.
The hay knives are different than I've seen in the US.
There's another popular tool in NZ called a "slasher" which is a pike
or billhook. They use it in the endless battles against gorse,
thistles, and other invasive weeds.
Tiny monuments to the villains who introduced these scourges dot the
country.
Hog jaw anyone? The local wild pigs are "Captain Cookers" left behind
by their namesake in the 1700s.
The proper method to hunt them is with dogs and a knife.
Gary's wife Rose is an avid hunter-gatherer. She nets mullet on a
rising
tide and founder on the falling. She has the mullet smoked and it's
amazing.
I hadn't had a chance to build anything for a few months, so I went
nuts and built this baltic-style mud sled.
I saw them a few years ago on German TV. You go scooting along on mud
you'd
ordinarily sink up to your knees in. The sled is a big hit.
MOVIES: Click on any image below to see a .AVI format movie of the mud
sled in
action
The bottom board is 3/8" plywood 20.5" wide, 66.5" long. 1x2" boards on
edge along
edge of board. Nose is turned up for the front foot or so, the rest is
flat.
1x2" sticks to hold handle up are 33" long, 14" from the tail of the
board. The diagonal forward brace mounts to base 23" ahead of uprights.
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Copyright 2004 Tim Anderson
