Joe's comments on building his canoe
As to the date, the canoe was
finished just before you [Peter Black] and I left the islands and since we expected to be
on the Autumn trip of the Yap Islander that normally would have arrived in September, it
must have been finished before September. I think that it took a week of work in the
forest before it was light enough to pull out to the house and then it probably took a
month to get it to its final form. So the date would be July / August 1969.
It is interesting that Huan Hosei used the name Bemar Abraham in his recent letter to me.
I always thought that Bemar's last name was Pacifico (it would be nice to do some
family trees). In any case, the major work was performed by Bemar. All the men of the
island helped at the early stage when the form was roughed out in order to make the canoe
light enough to drag it out of the woods. During that time, our family (i.e., Rita and
Bemar) was supposed to provide food for everyone working on the project. I am
not sure how that worked out in practice as I was working in the school as usual. I
do remember that we took a kerosene stove and a coffee pot and coffee out to the site and
had a permanent coffee service during that week. That caused a problem because the
canoe was finished faster than any canoe had ever been finished and it then dried too
quickly and twisted a bit in the process. The idea to build the canoe came from Joe
Nestor. He and Kalisto Nestor worked with Bemar to do the final finishing work
behind our house. It was so beautiful in its natural color that I painted it with
varnish instead of the traditional red color.
We got it to Palau on the Yap Islander and from there to Guam. A shipping agent
agreed to send it on to San Francisco for free with a friend who was captain on one of the
ships that traveled between Guam and the States. The ship wasn't expected for some
months so I was back in Pennsylvania when he informed me that it would not be possible to
send unfinished wood products to the States. That was the end of the story except that
after some years it somehow ended up at the airport.
I have lots of written notes on the method of producing the shape of the canoe but they
are all in Pennsylvania. Basically, the measurements were all proportional and made
by making a measurement with a string and then folding it in half and then half again,
etc. Bemar had a special tool, shown in his left hand in photo 5.
This was a spool of string in a holder which allowed the string to be drawn out
through a slurry of charcoal. The string was held against the canoe in two places
and then snapped to make a black straight line between the points. The first mark was a
straight line from one end to the other after a flat area had been produced on one surface
of the log. This defined the length of the canoe. The next marks were made at
1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 of the length. I think that is what they are doing in photo 5.
The 1/4 and 3/4 points were the place where the hull began to angle upwards. There
were rules for the width at each point and the process shaping the round hull was rather
cleverly done. Joe Nestor probably remembers the details.
NOTE: The photograph of the small canoe in the water was taken from the deck of the
the Yap Islander when Joe joined a field trip down to Tobi. Joe was
once told that the curved shape of the outrigger frame was characteristic
of Tobi canoes. Does anyone from Tobi know who is in this canoe?
