What a magazine, and what an editor !

For the coracle, I wanted to keep to a low-tech approach appropriate to coracles. The canvas I used came from a second-hand store that often has a good supply of very heavy canvas in 5’ x 10’ pieces for $10 each. It had hardly any stretch in it, so I sewed the skin in five pieces. I wouldn’t attempted sewing if not for my Sailrite walking-foot sewing machine. I did a lot of research on the coating and most of the information came from the UK and pointed to bitumen. In the US that’s asphalt. I had used an asphalt coating to repair a leaky flat roof on my garage and it seemed to stay flexible years after application. The roofing compound was cheap and black, like the UK coracles. I did some test pieces on scraps of canvas and it seemed like it would work, but months after coating the coracle. I could hear the coating crack when flexed. The text pieces were then doing that too. I’ve been planning to add another coating, Elasto Barrier, this summer. On the outing in this article the original skin and coating proved waterproof. Whatever water might seep through the cracks would evidently get stopped by the tightly woven canvas.
Nylon and urethane would make a good skin. The fabric might not pull tight around the hemisphere shape of the hull, but the gathers could be kept small and flattened a bit more by ironing. A urethane coating, which I used for my bidarka, has aged very well and has proved durable.
Starting with a frame made of foraged saplings, I was drawn to the economy a more traditional approach of asphalt on canvas. My cost for materials was about $30.

All the photos of the coracle with me aboard were taken with a GoPro Hero3 Black, a model introduced in 2012. I mounted it (in its waterproof housing) on a tripod that I stood in the water at the island’s edge. I set the camera to shoot a still frame every 10 seconds and then paddled around within its view. For the sailing shot, I opened six of the image files in Photoshop and chose three of them for the composite image. Because the background didn’t change, it was a simple operation to select and copy the bits of the image around the coracle in the second and third shots and paste them into the first shot. After that, I corrected the GoPro’s fish-eye distortion, cropped, and did all the usual image adjustments.

My traditionally built coracle in this story isn’t as much fun to paddle as FAERIE. (For a description of FAERIE, see “A San Juan Islands Solo” and scroll to the bottom.) The coracle is heavier, larger, and rounder and the size and shape make it more difficult to paddle. It sits higher in the water, and to reach the water I had to make a paddle about 18” longer than FAERIE’s paddle. FAERIE is roughly rectangular and the bow, being lower and straight across, is closer to me and to the water. The coracle’s rounded bow puts its front extremity significantly farther away. There are other types of coracles in the UK with squared-off bows and some of those even have tumblehome, features that make for an easier reach to the water. Their squared front ends, like FAERIE’s, continue below the waterline, providing support for the paddler, just as a broad transom in an outboard skiff supports the weight of the motor and skipper.
With my coracle’s rounded bow, I often paddled off to one side. That would pull the coracle at an angle, increasing the drag and making progress slow. FAERIE has a flat bottom and hard chines, giving it more stability that the coracle. For the coracle, I followed the traditional method and weighted the bottom during its upside-down construction and that flattened the curve a bit, but it’s still rounded not as stable as I’d like. One of my goals for the coracle was to do overnighter and I’m hoping that a load of gear aboard, and perhaps some water ballast, would increase its stability.