ADVENTURES AFLOAT
Chris Tipper’s involvement in kayaking began when he took part in Expedition 360, a human powered circumnavigation by an international team headed by Jason Lewis. For that Chris ‘did a bit of paddling in the Pacific,’ then got invited to do another part of the expedition kayaking across Indonesia.
He explains: “I wasn’t really a kayaker before that but the possibilities of kayaking opened up when I did that trip. After that I ended up looking after a fishing boat in Greece. I didn’t have a car and needed transport so I got myself a cheap plastic kayak and got back into kayaking.”
This inspired him to build his own sea kayak. “I decided to take a bit of time out and do it. I got the bug for making kayaks in the West Greenland style.”
In all his builds Chris likes to use reclaimed timber where he can. He says that a good bit of reclaimed wood is always better than new timber.
“Seasoned wood is fantastic and you get a lot less movement with it,” he says. “Much older timber will have gone through a slower drying process before it’s gone into the kiln and some of it has not even gone into a kiln at all. It has just been air-dried to the point where it’s become completely stable.”
The Greenland paddle
Along with the West Greenland style boats is a whole world of paddling which involves using the Greenland paddle. The essential difference between the Greenland paddle and a modern sea kayak paddle is that the Greenland paddle is longer, the blade is thinner and the paddle itself is symmetrical. There is no offset in the blades and the oval handle is perpendicular to them. “You can paddle all day with this and your shoulders won’t ache and it allows such a fluid natural style,” says Chris.
Quite a lash up
It was the indigenous boats of the Pacific where Chris first came across the use of lashings and he has been an admirer of them ever since. Using them in constructing a craft is one of his favourite things about skin-on-frame boats.
“For most of man’s history in boats lashings have offered a way of putting something together and making it seaworthy,” he says, but he does admit that they can take their toll to get right.
“The threads need to be so tight that your hands bleed by the time you are finished. I put tape around fingers that are getting the brunt of it and also I use a winding stick to cinch them up.”
Originally animal sinew would have been used for lashings on kayaks but now they are made of polyester. The stitching used to sew the fabric outer shell is also synthetic and is a combination of shoemaking thread and dental floss. “Dental floss is a brilliant sewing thread because basically it’s an ultra-strong polyester thread,” adds Chris. “The skin-on-frame boats haven’t got any metal fastenings at all.”
Most of the covering material on them is either nylon or polyester fabric. The polyester is about 30% less strong but the Nylon fabrics are hygroscopic so they tend to go baggy in the water. So Chris uses polyester and to make up for the 30% weakness uses 30% thicker material. The fabric should not be tied too tight to the frame – that way it retains more puncture resistance and acts as a natural shock absorber.
Paddling the oceans
Chris and a colleague built Moksha the pedal boat in 1994 at the Exeter Maritime Museum – the first boat he made after leaving Lowestoft Boat Building College.
He joined part of the pedal powered expedition in the Solomon Islands. Moksha is about to undergo a refurbishment because next year it’s going out to the Pacific again. It’s to be used by Jason Lewis as part of an educational TV programme to deliver the message about sustainable living and fragile ecosystems.