"I have slipped the surly bonds of earth...."

Today Tillikum rolled out of the studio, slid into Big Pond, and performed beautifully.

Tillikum gets a face lift.

When I first was given this canoe my first thought was to do the obvious repairs (replace rotten gunwales, repair holes and dents and paint it) but I have a compulsion to put a sail on anything I come across so my next step was to build a centerboard case, shape and glue it into the slot in the bottom of the canoe and then cut the hole through to the bottom. This proved to be a great user up of time and epoxy and so, having invested that much into this derelict fiberglass canoe I was lured into a continuing process of adding one more refinement after another. This is very different from working from plans and the process has its own unique frustrations and rewards.

The frustrations stem from having to adapt to and make allowances for what is there already - a canoe hull - and not really knowing what the next step is going to be except in the vaguest sort of way: no one had figured it out for me in advance. The satisfactions and rewards are the mirror image of the frustrations - All of the above call for imagination and research, problem solving and invention and when it is finished, if it performs well and looks beautiful there is a great sense of satisfaction.

After a winter of poking away at this canoe I am just about ready to launch it in the pond behind my studio to be sure that the modifications I have made have not been detrimental to its seaworthiness. I will then make sails, and do any necessary modifications to the canoe as it is tested out on the ocean.

While I am doing that I will describe the earlier steps along the way in some detail just in case there is someone else out there who has been given some thing like this canoe and knows they must either do something with it or take it to the dump. The technical details may be directly useful, but the process of design and development could be applied to just about any thing and that is my real interest.

Can you imagine...

Tillikum sails in the moonlight,

watched over by crows.

Down, but not out.

Beaten and dented, this old fiberglass canoe was left at the side of the road and labeled "Free".That was about what I could afford so she came home to stay and to be reborn as Tillikum during a winter in my studio.

This first entry is the beginning of the story of a canoe that was left in the garbage and found new life and self respect as a three masted sailing ship. This first image is of the crow who saw the abandoned canoe and carried the message of its fate to me . I hope you will enjoy the story as it progresses week by week.