Manu'iki'iki's Story

The Back Story

While on the M/V Matson Manukai in 2015, I had the idea that designing and building a boat and heading down the coast of Georgia was something I wanted to do. I used to daydream about taking off down the coast while wandering the beaches on the south end of Tybee when I was a feral beach rat, and I’ve never really outgrown that daydream.

I designed three boats for those shallow, coastal waters in my head while standing watch: an expedition stand-up paddle board, a deep-vee wooden powerboat, and a barge with a commercial-like front house.

So of course I didn’t build any of those; not exactly.  Instead I built an outrigger sailing canoe.  

In all fairness, I chopped the freeboard off and put a stand-up paddleboard deck on it, but it’s still a sailing canoe… a super shallow draft canoe with a kickup rudder and leeboard.  

To power it, I built a solar outboard motor and 36v battery (yes, a home-made battery), made or altered three paddles (a backup for the backup!), and refabricated a head sail and a mainsail. Then I threw it in the water at Shilshole Bay and gave it a cursory test.

Aaaaaand… then I started two large projects. 

So I put Manu’iki’iki into my storage unit and within minutes he was buried in - quite literally - 72 cubic yards of rockwool insulation.

That was two years ago.

For those who think I typoed: I grew up with boats being “she” and did not know there were “he” boats.  As it turns out, Micronesian sailing canoes are male.

Here are some interesting things about this project:

• Manu’iki’iki is built with 100% reused and reclaimed lumber.  

• The hull and iokos (the curved “sticks” that attach the outrigger to the canoe) are from a cedar deck I replaced with composite decking years ago;  

• The two bulkheads are plywood from the deck of a long-since departed inflatable dinghy Tim gave me after the dinghy gave out;

• The Wa’a (the athwartships members the iokos lash to) are from a piece of dunnage saved from a project I did for a Hawaiian architect - which turned out to be Sitka spruce;

• The rudder is from a shelf board of an unknown type of cedar ripped out of the root cellar in our house, put in by either Laura’s grandfather or great-grandfather;

• The mast step and ama uprights are from a piece of handrail off the house I further turned with a lathe I made from a drill motor and skateboard bearings and is clear fir;

• Assundry “sticks” used to tighten lashings are from a madrona tree Laura and I planted in the yard;

• The deck is a combination of the red and Port Orford cedars I used to make the hull and three pieces of cut-off and saved Sitka spruce from a boom I made for Stu’s sailboat Ishka;

• The bamboo all comes from a harvest undertaken by Andy from a neighborhood patch - he brought the 30’ sticks over to my house (leaves and all) on an electric “one-wheel” through the streets of Seattle in one of the more awesome bits of randomness associated with this boat;

• The boat is named Manu’iki’iki (“really little bird”) in part because one of “my” Steller’s Jays hung out with me the entire time I was building the hull, hopping along the ground or in the trees and bushes surrounding the boat shed, snacking on whatever birds snack on, unannoyed in the least by the noise and the dust;

• The sails are from a marine garage sale Laura and I went to in 2010 which began their lives as larger sailboat cruising sails. I have used the fabric for many projects over the years and saved remnants of fabric for “just in case” purposes; these were highly modified sail “corners” re-imagined with Ivy’s hand stitching to make up the main and a small jib;

• There is not one piece of metal used in the construction of this boat - no screws, nails, or rigging pieces.

I’m sure to be missing some random bit of information here, but I’ll update as I think of it.

Currently, I am on Tybee Island and Manu’iki’iki is at the WBG Marine shop where he’ll undergo a few small modifications and reassembly, beginning in the morning. If I don’t go out paddling on a board with Fleetwood, that is… he offered and I might just take him up on that… I do have a full and a partial wetsuit with me and it would be a crying shame to haul them all this way and then not use at least one of them.

The morning will tell.