I took the thin plywood panels out of the box and lined them up on the plastic floor covering. A Pygmy Arctic Tern. Too excited to wait, I stitched and glued the middle butt joints with epoxy after only a cursory glance at the directions. Then, hmm, there was another butt joint at the bow; together it didn’t seem to fit in my 16-foot workshop. I re-measured the room. Still 16 feet.
Hello? Pygmy? Do you sell different sized Arctic Terns? Oh. I meant to order a 14-foot model.
No problem, Ginni, just ship it back in the box.
Too late! That is how I got to build two kayaks in one 16-foot room. And, that is when I learned that life is never the adventure we first expected.
A boat is a creative extension of a life—even if it is from a kit. Your hands make it. You rig it to your needs and tastes. My 14-foot Arctic Tern has mahogany pad eyes with a blue deck line running underneath around the perimeter of the boat. Mahogany end toggles match the pad eyes. After my latest trip to Australia, the kayak may also get a sail.
For me, that little Arctic Tern opened more doors than I thought existed in this labyrinth of life. One little kit boat project, some years playing in surf, a symposium in northern California, a Welsh filmmaker… One door just kept opening to another in a dizzying maze of kayaking adventures I had never even dared to dream. Where does all that good fortune start? In a 16-foot room.
The boat-building bug may be more manageable in kayak size, but of course it isn’t limited to kayakers. Go to Marina Seca in Guaymas, Mexico, and you will find a revolving community of international project addicts of all flavours: fibreglass, aluminum, steel, Ferro cement and wood. Pandora III, a 50-foot schooner with two broken masts and wood rot completely through is a box that should have never been opened. But there is one so smitten with her that she will be his life’s work. Thankfully, he is still a young man.
What am I doing in Marina Seca? I’m hanging with another sea lover and boat artist on his steel-hulled sailboat. Instead of building a boat, I’m chopping my fibreglass Romany in half in preparation to fit it onboard to explore the world under sail and paddle.
Looking back to my Arctic Tern days, I believe: You shape the boat, then let the boat shape you.
Ginni Callahan is a sea kayak guide on the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, in winter and on the Columbia River and Oregon Coast in the summer. She owns Columbia River Sea Kayaking and Sea Kayak Baja Mexico.
This article first appeared in the Summer/Fall 2010 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
