Well, the boat is finished. It took 21 working days to build what is by far the heaviest 16-foot boat I’ve ever seen. To think I couldn’t even lift the bottom! Attached are some shots which probably don’t require any captioning. In two days representatives from Ritsurin Koen garden will come and a crane will drop the boat in the harbor for a test. The Garden is going to have a more formal ceremony on May 1st launching the boat in their pond. Too bad about their timing, because I will be coming to Japan about a week later to start my project building the cormorant fishing boat in Gifu.
It has been a lot of hard work but its been a very interesting time being here. The quiet village of Oda, the city of Takamatsu and the amazing islands of the Inland Sea. Plus this trip has been great for laying the groundwork for my next project. More to blog about come May!
Poking around I found this fully functioning capstan in the harbor.
I left all my patterns and jigs behind in case I build another one of these.
Thanks for documenting this build.
ReplyDeleteI guess the boat will feel rock solid on the water, almost like a small barge.
Brgds
Jonas
The politest comment is that she's a punt. The crane operator told me she weighs 400 kg or 880 pounds. I would have guessed more!
ReplyDeleteSorry about that, I didn't mean to be rude.
DeleteIn Denmark a punt is also a barge, so that was why I chose that word.
The Danish word is "pram".
Brgds
Jonas
No, I didn't take it at all as rude. You can call it a barge. I hadn't thought of pram though it has transoms at both ends. I guess because its perfectly symmetrical fore and aft. This boat was designed for the garden so its not strictly "traditional" in terms of shape, though I built it with traditional methods. The closest Japanese term is watashibune. Those who know Japanese may think of watashi as the personal pronoun "I" but here its from the verb watasu, to ferry or cross over. Japanese now say "ferry boto" but the old term for a ferry is watashibune, or "crossing over boat." Many small ones looked a lot like this boat.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the shared information! It was really interesting and pretty informative!
ReplyDelete