Umiak Spring in Oly WA
Back in the old days, when both I and the world were young and innocent, back even before it became a state I resided in Alaska. Now this was when white people north of the arctic circle were rarer than brown polar bears. The Inuit peoples had a saying for a particular kind of a year when the ice broke early, and all the signs pointed to a very early spring, and a hot summer full of promise; they called such a year, an Umiak Spring year.
An Umiak is a skin on frame boat that can be paddled, rowed, or sailed. It is large, open, reasonably flat bottomed, and made of the split skins of walrus sewed water tight around a frame of bent sticks ingeniously joined in such a way as to provide strength and flexibility. The flexibility is very important in the northern waters as they are some of the most capricious on the planet. Futher, these boats needed to be able to be beached under incredible surf conditions.
The Inuit peoples called these years of early spring Umiak Spring years as the Umiak, while robust and capable of carrying whole tribal groups, were vulnerable to the sharp edges of the blue ice as well as the hidden points in the soft glow-white ice. So to get the Umiaks out before the equinox was indeed a special year.
We are having such a spring here in Oly WA. I am also calling this an Umiak Spring year as the winter temperatures have abated as of today, and I am able to get the big steam bender prepared for building an Umiak. Our local weather forcasters had been calling for this to be an ‘April weekend’ and they are not far off.
Even though Oly WA (Olympia in Washington state for you fur’eners) is at the southern most point of Puget Sound, and is in the middle of the Puget Sound ‘Riviera’, it is usually too damp and too cold to think of steam bending the long woods for Umiak ribs this time of year. One finds that the time to ‘lignen lock’ on wood coming out of a steamer in the normal February is about 2 seconds, whereas in May, the piece might take a whole 4 minutes to really set up. This of course provides plenty of time to get in there and wrestle the hot wood into your desired shape.
As a result of both the Bush Boom, and the tax incentives that are preventing any corpofascista companies from hiring around here, I find that I will be doing a variety of activities to try to promote cash flow toward mortgage and HEALTH (*&#@&#HMO”S) Insurance. One of the things I thought to do is to build an Umiak for display/sale at this years Wooden Boat Fair in Oly. Also, these are great for eco-tour kind of things. A 26 footer can carry 12 people and gear, no worries. I don’t use Walrus hide by the way, I use Ballistic Nylon. Much stronger and much more ice resistant.
I don’t have any pictures of an Umiak, but if you want to see a skin-on-frame expedition Greenland style kayak that I made, have a look here….
http://www.halfpasthuman.com/vuilbaard/SOF-2.htm….watch out, my old bald head might be visible in some of the pictures.
In any event, I digress, what I was headed toward was a discussion of weather. And just how atypical is this February weekend. Not only is it about 59 in our little microclimate here, but I noticed that in the last month, our peach trees have put on incredible growth. At least 18 inches on the main branches. Also, we have rhubarb up, and in the case of the little wild ones, nearly harvestable for a pie!!!!
This is unheard of in this area. While we do have mild winters, I have lived on this property for almost 2 decades, and have never even had a glimmer of a February rhubarb pie. At the earliest, maybe the last weekend in March….
The garlic is up and growing, and there are so many indications within the local forest of a resurgence of plant growth, that I am starting my veges tomorrow. Today I double dug most of the bed and added in a layer of composted chicken manure with hay. Note that with bird flu about, this is no longer a good idea necessarily. I am sanguine as this is one year old compost that I made with straw, hay, and assorted green manure crops.
Now the bad part is that this may be an indicator of another summer like last year. In spite of the cold gripping much of the nation, and the splitting of the jet stream (this is freaky)…we had the same sort of early spring and very warm summer last year. ONLY not quite so early.
The problem of course, is that last summer was so severe that over 23 thousand EU people (mostly French) died from the heat.
One more real indicator is that today, I was able to run the house off the solar array for the whole day. And still ended up with a net charge in the battery (12 of the 6 volt deep cycle marine 415 amp hrs series connected into a 24 volt system running 2 vanner inverters – one 240 volt, one 120). I have 18 of the Siemens 100 watters. I had been noticing that I am pulling more charge in December and January, but until a week ago, had not charted it out. I am up on charge rates by over 21 per cent this year over last. Everything the same as last year, so the only variable is either the number of clear days, or the intensity of the sun. As there have been only 2 additional clear days, and most of the charge seems to accumulate on days that usually are a waste, I can only conclude at this point that the sun is putting out more energy this year over last. As I am charting strictly charge, not use, no other variables intrude. This also is a bit on the freaky/scary side of things.
In any event, tomorrow promises to be another kiss-of-spring day so I will be able to finish the prep of the outdoor stove (pizza, bread, pies in a wood burning masonry mass stove that I made) such that I can get it fired up to support the steamer. I take the steel door off the stove and replace it with the boiler part of the steamer. This connects to the steaming chamber itself. In any event, one more days repair, and a few days to cure up a bit, then bobs-your-uncle, and we are steaming up a mass of Umiak ribs…..ymmmmmm. Just the thing to start off the spring… a new boat. This will carry two sails, junk rigged (*thus the moniker in case anyone wanted to know = junker…one who rigs junk sails – also known as fully battened lug sails just so you’ll know I am not totally an ignorant pig).
Anyway, hope the cold melts off you easterner’s soon enough, it is really nice to get outtathedamncabin!
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