Amour Fou

I am going to start building a traditional SOF qajaq in the more or less immediate future.

No surprise here, I guess. I suppose that, deep inside, I have known for quite a while I would eventually end up doing it and I believe friends and relatives sort of knew it as well. Well, now I've gone public and it's official. Well, sort of...

Upon reflection, I'd say the junction of several circumstances has acted as catalyst. The great time I had on Alfonso's, "Greenlander from Murcia", Xabier's happy churning out of boat after boat, the extremely useful and didactic SOF construction blog by Paco, buying Harvey Golden's "Kayaks of Greenland" and the consequent repeated exposure to the many beautiful qajaqs in that wonderful book, the, in all likelihood unjustified, self-confidence boost in my woodworking abilities brought about by my carving of two Greenland paddles, etc... Alternatively, you could just say the time was ripe.
However, I'm ignoring all that good sense would recommend for a first-time boat-builder and I am not going to follow any of the trusty books that have repeatedly enabled even guys like me (I want to believe at least *some* would have been be like me when it comes to lack of skill, wouldn't they?) to build nice, serviceable Greenland-style qajaqs. Instead, I'm building a semi-replica.

It's not that I'm trying to skip homework: I own and have read Morris, Cunningham and Starr and I'm sure they will help me a lot. At least, I hope so as I am certainly going to need help. Lots of it. And, yes, some of you that may be reading this, you are right to be worried: I fully intend to pester you with silly, novice questions. You've been warned.

The reason for such a choice is quite simple, actually: I've fallen in love with one particularly beautiful qajaq. If I am going to try and build a qajaq it just has to be this one. No way around that. I'm just helpless. To at least some extent, I am aware of the added difficulties that going this route will entail and that they will be exacerbated by my lack of experience. I'm smart enough to realize that I'm likely bringing on myself quite a bit of additional worry, anguish and frustration. Not sensible enough to let that stop me, though. In case you were wondering, the boat is Danish National Museum Lc. 43, West Greenland 1834, KOG #31 and it has been built before. Brian Schulz of Cape Falcon Kayak, has produced a semi-replica of Lc. 43 that shows that indeed, the actual boat is truly as gorgeous as her lines suggest.


Incidentally, there is an episode of "The Sopranos" which happens to be the titled "Amour Fou". In it, Tony is introduced to the expression, which he later renders in a mispronounced yet, in a way, still quite adequate way as "our mofo".

I'd like to believe that won't apply to this whole qajaq building thing and I.