Boating In The

Territory

  by Bonzai Yak

  112 pages

Chapter 2: Territory Boats (part b)

 

The main thing is you have to work together - there has to be some sympathy between the bow and stern. It's important to keep some bounce in the bungee. Not too much or it gets hard to pull. Not enough and the boat loses shape. When you first start out it sometimes happens that one of the boaters leads the motion. But after a while the paddling begins to work on its own and no-one decides on the way to do it. The boat just floats and moves with the water and you'll find that you paddle in a no-minded way in response to the wind and the whims of the waves. Just keep the stretch in the bungee right and you can't go wrong.

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No matter how much you like the water, you're going to spend time on the land as well. One nice thing about boats is the way they fold up and are easy to carry. Here's two good ways to carry a boat when you want to portage or find sport in port. Each of the boaters unclips a clip from one of the eyebolts on opposite poles diagonally.

That's hard to say and harder to hear. Beau Weevil made a small drawing here to show what I mean. Each of the poles is separate now with one piece of bungee still clipped on one end. Then you wrap the bungee around and around going up the pole. Clip the loose end to the eyebolt on top and it's easy to carry the wound around pole.

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You can walk a long way for a long enough time when you carry a boat in this fashion. It gives you a staff to lean your weight on and you can use a boat in the carrying mode in lots of other useful ways. Then when you're done with your time on land and you want to go out on the water again, just unclip one end of the bungee cord and unwind it down the pole. Clip yourself onto the free eyebolt of your partner who's done the same. And there you are, you're set up to go, the boats all ready to float anywhere you want.

Here's a second way to fold up a boat and carry it onto the land. Don't unclip the bungee at all, just stand the poles up side by side so the extra clip that slides on the bungee hangs down and comes to the middle of the droopy loop that the bungee forms. Wind the top bungee loop down the pole and wind the other one up from the bottom. When both bungee loops are wound around right, clip the two sliding clips together. It'll keep the two poles wrapped up tight, I told you those two extra sliding clips would be handy things. This way just one of you carries the poles and it's faster to unwrap the boat again. Makes for a much quicker getaway. Pirates swear by it, but that's not surprising. Pirates swear any chance they get.
So that's the two-person one-section boat, good for short trips or cruising around. Sometimes though you've got further to go and you've got more crew than just two of you. Say you've got four. Could make two boats and go side by side. But often it's better to make the boat bigger. Add a few sections, as many as you like. The only thing is you'll need some more bungee to hook the sections together. A two person boat only needs one bungee from each of the poles, but each extra section you add on the end, you need two more cords to make up the sides.

So that's why it is when you make up a boat you always rig it with two bungee cords. Didn't mention the double rigging before but you can see how it is in all the pictures that Beau's been drawing. A double rigged boat is the best way to go, it gives you the possibility to hook up with others anyway that you want. You could carry the extra cord I guess, use it as a belt or something else. Why go to all that trouble though? I don't know about you, but I don't like losing my pants right away when I meet someone new. And the main thing is a boat is for making possibilities more possible. So why not have yours as ready as you can?

Having an extra bungee cord as part of the shape of the boat as it is, you're ready to link anyway that occurs, anywhere anytime you're prepared. It's an opening really, an invitation, a hole in the whole of the boat. When you're out boating the trick of it is to refrain from projecting your view on the Territory. You're asking the Territory to present itself to you without having a map that you've planned. Leave a hole in everything you do, the Great Pirate Chief told me that once himself. I've been working on that ever since he said it and letting it work on me.

Course there's another good reason for having that extra bungee right there as part of the boat. You need it to make a sail. And if you get into boating at all, you're going to sail as well as paddle. You go a lot faster when the wind does the work, and the wide open sea is no place to be in a light little paddle boat. There's a whole lot of water in the Territory and lots of the islands are oceans apart. A paddle boat works when you stay in close to cruise the harbour or hug the coast. But you gotta hoist sail if you want to see what waits for you in the Territory beyond the horizon of what you can see.

Making a sailboat's simple as toast and not as easy to burn. Two boaters make up a one section boat and the third stands inside to make the mast. Unclip one end of each bungee cord from the same eye bolt of the mast-holder's pole. They'll both still be clipped to the other eye, so raise that end upward up into the sky so they both dangle down on either side of the pole. Clip the bottom of each hanging cord to the free sliding clips on the paddle boat's sides. Then hoist the mast higher so the bungee takes shape to make a triangular sail.

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