A How-to Guide for Making Boat Knives

Seeing as how I neglected this blog for so long, which I guess is a big no-no, I am going to post two in rapid succession, which I would assume is also a no-no. I am just full of no-nos lately.

But! Here it is.

A Guide on Making Your Very Own Boat Knife

I decided to post this because 

1. I made a boat knife.
2. Boat Knifes are super duper specialty. You ain't gonna come across them unless you're looking.
3. When you do come across them, they're expensive as crap.

So once again, here we go.

Kyle's Guide to Making a Halfway Decent Boat Knife

Halfway Decent, am I right?

Needed Supplies:

• One (1) Dolla dolla bill. The kind with George Washington's face on it.
• A hacksaw, with metal blade. (As in a blade designed to cut metal. Not just one made from metal.)
• Maybe a sharpie. It'd be a good idea in my opinion. But hey, your choice I guess.
• A Place to cut something with a hacksaw (I feel like I am giving away the whole article here.)
• A Grinder. This kind of grinder.
• Drill/Drill Press with a 1/4" or 1/6" drill bit. Whatever looks right.

Step One: Forget actually making the knife, what am I, a blacksmith? The answer is hell no, I am not a blacksmith. If you are a blacksmith, stop reading now. Mainly because the rest of this article may make you cry for your lost art.

What you are going to do my friend, is find a knife. Look in stores, or if you're cheap like me, look at garage sales. I picked up a knife for the super duper price of $1. You want the knife you buy to be larger than the size of the boat knife you want. Don't let it be a wimpy knife either, make sure it's pretty strong, not too flexible. Just because it costs one dolla dolla bill doesn't mean you get to be sloppy.

Step Two (Optional Perhaps?): Sharpie on this knife. See the Boat Knife within the Dolla Dolla Knife, and use your sharpie to bring out the inner beauty. By this I mean block out the length and shape of your knife, as so :

Notice I got impatient and started cutting before getting

the idea to write this article as a joke.

You see that rounded edge? That's what I sharpied. It's optional because if you're the best (around!) Then you could probably just cut and grind this knife out without the sharpie.

Step Three: From here, we get down to business. Line that hacksaw up with the longest part of your boat knife, and start sawing. Cut the rest of that stuff off. The goal is to cut off all of the blade that isn't straight. You don't want the blade to come to a point at all, because if it drops 100 feet to deck, that is really going to ruin someone's day. 

Hopefully that explains it pretty well. After you've cut off the part that comes to a point, we move on to step four.

Step Four: Use the grinder to  make the flat edge you have rounded like in that poorly drawn picture. Slowly grind out the rounded shape, making sure to stay safe in the process. If you need, get a friend to help out.

The toilet paper in the back has been made

fireproof and is not a hazard. Of course.

After grinding that out, congratulations, your pretty much done.

Step Five: Turn to the butt end of you knife, the wooden end (It is wooden, right?) and drill a hole. Its for your seine twine lanyard of course.

Your done.

Congratulations, go sharpen and enjoy the thing. You just saved over $100.

© Kyle Packer

The End of the End of the Beginning (The Finally Arriving Part 2 of 2)

It was the last day of the race across Lake Superior. The finish line was within sight to the east. Or maybe not, my eyesight is pretty bad. The expectation was to cross the finish line sometime during the next few hours, in first place no less, but there was some solid competition on the horizon.

Several miles north of us, one of the other ships had picked up some strong winds, and was closing the gap to the finish line rapidly. The lake itself had also decided to get in on the action. Waves were swelling and breaking across the deck, no small feat to do to the Niagara.

These obviously weren't enough factors to make the race exciting, so on addition to this the mates had decided to romantically caress a boundary line in an attempt to really squeeze out every drop of the lead we had. By romantically caressing, I mean that the captain said something along the lines of, "Try to avoid going to the right too much, we are about 20 feet from the boundary lines, we'll get disqualified if we cross it." Seeing as I was helping to steer the ship as he said this, I'm fairly sure my eyes about bugged out of my head. No pressure.

The race was close, and as the waves continued to break over the deck and soak us, the finish line drew closer and closer. The gap between the other ships and us closed rapidly, and it was a nail biter for a bit. But we crossed the finish line cheering, jumping, removing clothes in victorious fashion, and cheering some more. The Niagara had crossed first.

Of course, in the end there was something about time trials, and it ended up that we made third place after the application of what seems to be some 'Pretty Fancy Rules' by my standards. But really, it wasn't the racing that made my time on the Niagara. What turned my landlubber's interest in sailing into a full-blown passion would definitely be the people I met, and the ideals that make the tall ships work.

The people are definitely some of the best you can come across. Maybe a bit coarse by some standards, but it's hard not to love 'em, what with all the struggles and wonderful moments you share. If you can get over the initial stench, it only gets better from there.  As for the ideals, I just do well in any environment that fosters learning and teaching, and values a good work ethic.

And the views. The views kick ass. Going back this summer should be a blast.

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning (As in, Part 1 of 2 short posts regarding the end of my first travels)

Climbing down from the royals was hard to do, not so much for the distance I had to cover (although that was challenging) but mainly to break myself off from that view. Feet set back firmly on the deck again, I went back to rotating between the different duties. One of these duties that I haven't covered is look-out.

No. You don't get to be in the crow's nest. Sorry to break it to you, but the Niagara doesn't have a crow's nest. Instead you tend to stand on the anchor house (the line attached to the anchor, coiled up all nice and neat), scanning the horizon for ships and other things a vessel doesn't want to collide with (rocks, icebergs, floating whale carcass, not floating whale carcass, a whale carcass that was floating until recently but is now sinking...).

Point is, you stand and let the wind hit you while you look around for other ship's lights, and admire the view. Admiring the view seems to be a steady theme. But your actual job is to report anything you see to the mate on duty. To drive the point home, someone once reported seeing a "Huge light on the horizon". It ended up being the moon. Someone reported the moon as an obstacle we might collide with. Point being, if you see it, report it. I'd much rather be warned about the moon then end up crashing into it, boy would we look silly then.

As we were relieved from duty by the next watch, I stayed on deck to get ready for bed. One of the guys on the ship had heard from some "crazy lady" on the street in Duluth that there was a solar flare, making seeing the northern lights much more likely. (He called her a crazy lady not for saying this, seeing as it was based in science and fairly reasonable, but because she stopped to tell him about it on the street with no solicitation.) Anyways, crazy lady was right. Just before I went below-deck, the sky to the north of us slowly transformed, finally erupting into a brilliant display of colors that looked something like a sunrise at just past 11:00pm.

I went to bed more content than I have in most of my life I'd imagine.

© Kyle Packer

Royals

One hundred and sixty two tons of wood and metal moves fast. Much faster than you'd think. When the captain announced the plans to take part in the tallship race, I wasn't sure what to expect. There were several other ships we were competing against, of all different shapes and sizes. Some had more sails, some had a lot more sails, and some had sails I didn't even know what to make of.

Yet here I was, after just a few days of giving tours in Duluth, Minnesota, racing across Lake Superior to claim first place.

The wind had been strong right off the starting line, and this had made things interesting. All hands were on deck, and every sail that could possibly be set had been. Always looking for extra speed, we rigged a sail from the yawl boat up to the mainmast. It looked as if someone had tied a large handkerchief to the mast. The Chief Mate joked about having, "Sixteen of our fifteen sails set," but man, we were flying.

As soon as we were off and going, all the watches (groups) that weren't scheduled to be on duty were sent below (meaning you get to stop working.) This time is precious onboard, so everyone strives to use it as best as they possibly can by finding some place where they won't be stepped on too much on the berth deck, and sleeping like a rock for as long as possible.

Naturally, I followed suit. Sleeping after hard work is hands down the best kind of sleep available to the average man and woman, or any kind of person regardless of stature in life. I recommend everyone try it at least once in life.

Much later, I awoke for the 1800-2300 watch. This moment in time, more than any other on my entire month aboard the Niagara is what captured the sense of manliness and adventure and everything I had been looking for (although that's not to say there weren't dozens of others. Trust me, there were.) The goal of the 1800-2300 watch (6p.m. to 11p.m. for those too lazy to convert) that evening was to bring down a lot of the sails we had put up during the day, so that late night watches wouldn't have too much trouble with the sails in the pitch black. We quickly hauled on some lines and got things in order for the most part, but then it came to taking down the main royal.

This, for those of you who don't know what it means, is effectively the most badass thing possible in one of the most badass careers possible. Instead of boring you with what it means, I'll scare you with what it means I do. To take down the main royals, you climb up around 110 feet up the mainmast and stand on a log no thicker than your leg. The shrouds, or effectively the ladder you use to climb up the mast, get smaller and smaller as you go up the mast.

I'll help give you a visual of climbing up. Your ladder (Call them shrouds, be a sailor.) starts out around 15 feet wide at the bottom. Nice fat ladder, no problem. As you go up, it slowly gets skinnier and skinner as it grows closer to the top. By the time you're 110 feet up, you're very lucky to manage to jam your hand or foot into the two inch gap. This entire time you've been climbing without something to back you up in case you fall. Now, all the way up, let go with a hand so you can clip your safety gear into something that isn't running straight back down the 35 meters you just climbed up. (Yeah I use metric too, going crazy here.) Look at the deck and shudder if you want, and then look out.

And see it.

 Nothing but crystal blue water, all around you. No bottom in sight, no land in sight, and strangely, no panic either. Instead of bear hugging anything to keep from falling, I am so busy with working on taking down the royal and admiring the view, I find my hands more often than not either on the project or at my sides. It is beautiful up here. There are some views you can try to describe, there are some views a picture will do justice, and this is neither of those. It is something entirely unique and so spectacular, I can't put a thumb on how to aptly describe it. So I say sorry to you, the reader, and hope you will accept my humblest of apologies.

But from one hundred and ten feet off the deck of the Flagship Niagara, there is precious little in my head besides how beautiful the world can be.

We still had over 200 miles to go before we crossed the finish line, and every last one was worth savoring.

© Kyle Packer

Under sail

When I woke up, it was very clear something was different. I had fallen asleep to the (not at all gentle) purr of the twin diesel screws. Now, being woken up for the 2300 to 0300 watch, I couldn't hear them at all. The deck was pitch black, but I could tell the ship was rolling a lot more than what I was used to. I swung out of the hammock and onto the deck, making a futile attempt to avoid stepping on the people scattered across the deck sleeping. Then came the fun of rummaging through my seabag. If you want to know what using a seabag is like, try the following:

1. Buy a military surplus duffelbag
2. Set up duffelbag so it is mostly vertical (Try hanging it from a doorknob, this is close to the right height)
3. Place an item you know you will need into the duffelbag first.
4. Pile 2-3 weeks of dirty laundry on top of said item.
5. Turn off all of the lights in the room
6. Dig through the clothes. (Hurry! You only have 2 minutes until you have to be on duty on deck!)
7. Items deemed in the way are only to be removed in a last ditch effort.

Did you find what you were looking for? Didn't think so. As I stepped rather unprepared into the crisp lake breeze late this evening, it dawned on me why the engines had mysteriously fallen silent. We were sailing. The ship rolled gently back and forth, and I sat there stunned by a few things. First, sailing was a really, really nice alternative to motoring. Second, I felt like an idiot for not recognizing earlier that we were sailing. Third, sailing was a really, really nice alternative to motoring.

Then came tiller duty. For those of you that don't know what this is, instead of having a wheel that turns the rudder, the Niagara has a big stick attached directly to the rudder. To turn the ship, you get some people to push the stick. But mostly you just hold the stick steady, and watch a compass to make sure your holding the stick right. When you're rolling a lot however, the compass swings like 10 degrees to either side, and it's impossible to tell how well you're steering the ship.

Normally, this would drive me mad, but under sail, it didn't bother me as much. You quickly learn to just take the average of these huge swings and guess that as your heading. From there it's easy. The procedure goes as "Admire stars, look at compass, move tiller to correct, look at compass to make sure you're right, rinse repeat." This pattern becomes second nature very fast. It may have been my first time steering a 200 foot long sailing ship, but I was going to get a lot more practice in before I left the ship.

My assigned duty station for most of the time was tiller, meaning that if we were docking, practicing emergency drills, or had an actual emergency, another sailor and I would be in control of making sure the ship went the direction it was supposed to go.

It was nice. The tiller at times can be tiring, but emergency maneuvers are plain exciting. For man overboard drills, it usually requires turning the ship as fast as possible while it is still at its cruising speed. The tiller transforms from something of a toy, to a deadly weapon. There is no goofing off in this situation. You are in control of the safety of the other tiller worker, and they are in control of yours. If your grip slips or you let go, the momentum of at least 200 pounds of solid wood moving at a very high speed will come crashing into your partner. It works vice versa for you as well. Speed and precision rule supreme over the situation.

© Kyle Packer

To pick up from earlier

If anyone that reads this is actually interested in sailing with a ship, I highly recommend doing what I did. No, not giving a taxi card as a tip, that was an asshole move. I joined on with the ship during a big tour week, that's the only lesson you should take from me. You get to learn all about the ship, pretend you've known it all along, and tell little kids to refrain from falling into the water.

When the ship is in a port that isn't Erie, it typically goes like this. You wake up, have a good breakfast, and the day pans out in some combination of the following ways

1. You work maintenance, tarring aloft or any number of other projects. Tip: Be sure to wear your best attire, because the second you step off the deck, either aloft or into the headrigging, cameras will start clicking like your king kong swiping at aircraft.
2. You work tours, greeting tourists and answering their questions, making sure they have a good time. Tip: Brush your teeth well, and be glad that the camera can only see your teeth, and not smell your B.O., tourists, you're out of luck here, sorry.
3. You have the day off, go wander around aimlessly! Tip: Put on something besides your denim crew shirt, go out and window shop. Consider buying something, and then chuckle and realize you have no room to put it anywhere. Eat a greasy burger, and then find a coffee shop to check your e-mail at if thats your thing.

Overall, great choice. That way, when your out at sea, theres much less (still a lot) of asking what someone means by a phrase like, "We have some dead babies in those sails" (Hopefully though, your sails aren't furled if you're on the water though, am I right? am I right? You have no idea what I'm talking about, let's move on.)

For now, I am planning on leaving out most details about the cities unless they're relevant. If your interested in learning more about any of the cities I went to, I highly recommend visiting them in person (man I should get paid to promote these places.) or just use good old fashioned search engines.

Keeping in line with what I just said, after leaving Cleveland, we had to motor back to Erie thanks to the winds wanting to fight us the whole way. My summary of Erie goes something like this. The ship has lots of heavy stuff on it, and I got to move it back and forth for a week or two. However, the warm showers were nice. From there we went back out to sea, bound eventually for Duluth Minnesota.

I'm not sure if you get that, I mean I sure didn't, being from Arizona. The trip would take me from one side of Lake Erie, up the river past Lake Saint Claire, all the way across Lake Huron, AND all the way across Lake Superior. This is around 1000 miles. That is one miserable car ride, but on a ship lucky to be going 1/9th the speed? It's awesome. I went to bed knowing something great would happen.

© Kyle Packer

The Rooftops are Pointy

When I finally landed in Cleveland, Ohio after nearly ten hours of red-eye airport waiting, flying, layovers and more, I was thoroughly exhausted. I felt like I would have trouble telling up from left, and the duffel bag on my back certainly made me lean something like that. I quickly exited the airport to find a taxi, having discovered my final destination as the Browns Stadium.

My cabbie and I passed back the usual chit chat, about how it had been hot: "Oh your from Phoenix? You must be cold here than." "No, we don't get any humidity." "Oh yes, it is a, ah, dry heat there?" "Yep."  All in all he was a very nice man, and when he offered his card that didn't have his name on it, I took it. (If your reading this cabbie, that card ended up being part of a tip for an ihop waitress that included a free Circle K hotdog, an oil change, some soggy receipts and several gold dollar coins. So if you meet a cute ihop waitress from Tempe, AZ, you know who to thank.)

As he drove me through Cleveland, I took note of several things very quickly.

• Steep roofs. We don't have them in Arizona, because guess what, there is no snow to pile up on them.
• Tall buildings. Older than anything in Arizona. I mean like, marble and granite and statues of founding fathers old.
• Green. It's a vibrant color I had only heard guarded rumors of existing outside of Arizona.

And then the ship masts came into view. I mean wow, these things are tall. I am going to try my best to do one of those comparisons to help you visualize it, like the ones that compare cars stacked on top of each other to a building or something. Imagine Shaq. Now imagine 14 Shaq's standing on each others shoulders. this is a horrible comparison. Point is, if you had pennies stacked as tall as these masts, you could afford some prada shoes or something, that's how tall they are. I promise to never try these comparisons again.

It had completely blanked my mind until this point however, that several tallships sailing to a city from across the world to put on a festival, a "tallship festival" would be exciting for anyone but me. I'm selfish like that. But here they are, wall to wall people, tens of thousands of them wandering up and down the docks, taking pictures and slurping diet cokes. Point is I roll up in my taxi to a ticket booth and immediately think "Oh right. How in the hell did I not see this coming? I must be as blind as Ray Charles, and 1/500th as musically talented."

Lucky for me, this port had a huge "VOLUNTEER ENTRANCE" sign (that no other ports had, man did I luck out). No biggie, I can just tell them I work on the ship, no problem. All thats left is convincing the security I belong inside these gates for free, and I can dance my way onto the ship and sleep my jet lag off in a hammock. Let's look at this from the security guard's point of view.

A haggard looking kid wearing cutoffs, some trashy shirt, and torn up shoes approaches your security booth. On his back is a surplus military duffel bag absolutely PACKED with who knows what. Let's go with explosives, he could have enough explosives to blow up the block. Assessment? Sketchy. Let's interrogate him, see if he has any credentials or knows his stuff.
Security: "Do you have any papers proving you work on the ship?"
Me: "No."
Security:  "Do you have a crew shirt?"
Me: "No."
Security:  "Do you know the name of the Captain?"
Me: "No."
Security: "Do you know the ship's phone number?"
Me: "No."
Security: "Do you know the name of ANYONE on the ship?"
Me: "No."
Security: "Do you know anything about the ship?"
Me: "Um, I am guessing it's that one way over there?"

Overall, this candidate is horribly qualified for crew, and very well qualified to be a person with bad intentions. Final verdict from security?
Security: "Mmm, you don't look like a terrorist. Let's go find the ship."


Yeah me! Score! I wander around until I find the Niagara, and then cut the two hour line with a suave, "Uh, I think I uh, work here? Can I go onboard?" and quickly find some friendly crew mates who help me drop my stuff off in some back room and don a crew shirt. Finally, I can at least fake it. I get on the schedule, and lo and behold, it's my day off. Sweet, I think? Not really.

It boils down to "You can't go home, and you can't stay here. With the ship packed full of tourists and me not having the slightest idea what to do, I embark. I wander aimlessly, unsure of what to do, and where to go. If I recall, I ended up just passing out in some grass looking like a bum for like five or six hours. I then got up, ate, tried to fake doing something to kill a few hours until tours were over. (Passing out on park benches, looking like I am REALLY interested in every single item in every store, smelling bad, you know, the usual.)

Everyone on the ship says the first day or two are overwhelming, and I agree entirely. I couldn't have told you the time of day or which way was up. Everyone on the ship also says that you will not sleep the first night, and on this they were dead wrong. I was dead to the earth, and awoke a fresh new person who still had not the slightest idea what the heck was going on. But that was OK, because hey, here I was in a new city, trying something new. I hoped I'd eventually get the hang of it.


© Kyle Packer

How I got to the nowhere I am today.

Growing up in Arizona, it can be hard to get into sailing. Very hard. Harder still to get into tallship sailing. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but it's true. That's why I've decided to make a log of my adventures. I'd like to share how a teenager from one of the hottest and driest landlocked states in the nation woke up and decided to start sailing and working on ships that reach 100 feet tall and twice as long.

It all started with the books I read as a kid. Treasure Island, books about pirates, all the good stuff your average eight and nine-year-old boys are in to. I loved the idea of the open sea, and getting to see far off lands. However, my interest in sailing was rather squelched along with many other adventurous notions by responsible parents. (Looking back, it's a wonder I didn't burn a house down). I moved on to friends, school, girls.

Then, my senior year came around. Around the same time about a year ago, I realized I was on my way to becoming a bit of a man-baby. I couldn't cook, clean, do laundry, fix or create anything. As manliness points go, my dad had made me learn how to drive stick. I realized this wouldn't do, so I sat down and tried to figure out how to take a crash course in self-responsibility and start getting back on track.

Sailing came to mind pretty fast. I mean let's be honest, hauling on the lines to raise sail as a krakken rips men from the deck, while a torrent of hellwater pours on you from the skies, and the ocean itself opens its maw in a whirlpool to plunge you to the fathoms below, is hands down, the manliest stuff ever. I had to make it happen. But I also wanted to do it right. That meant no sunbathing, no cruise ships, no working only if I felt like it, and it most certainly meant climbing around the sails.

 I had to do my research, anything less and I would feel even less manly than when I started. After looking through many "Sit on the deck, feel the breeze, sip a tequila sunrise, haul on a line if you feeeeeeeel like it" sailing programs, I found the one I was looking for. The Flagship Niagara. Boasting a program for ages 16 to whatever, featuring "Spartan-like sleep and work schedules" and encouraging all trainees to be "able and willing to go aloft", I knew it was perfect. There was no better way to get on the track to manliness than to arrange to fly by myself across the country, make a connection flight, land in a city I'd never seen, figure out how to get from the airport to wherever the ship was (What do they call them? Docks? Marinas? how many places could this thing be? will I just be able to say "Take me to the Niagara!"?) and go bare bones for the next month of my life.

As I hugged and waved my parents goodbye outside the airport, 2000 miles away from my final destination, I knew no matter what I had gotten myself in to, it would change my life.

© Kyle Packer