OUTDOORS: Unity student builds hand-crafted canoe with history of durability 

BY TRAVIS BARRETT
 

04/26/2008

 

FINISHING TOUCH: William Hafford applies a coat of paint to his wood-canvas canoe. The canoe was Hafford’s independent study project at Unity College this semester.

 

 

FINAL ADDITION: In one of the last steps in the canoe-building process, William Hafford attaches a seat made of ash into his Maine Guide Canoe. Hafford plans to test the craft with a trip along the entire Northern Forest Canoe Trail in a few weeks.

 

 

WILLIAM HAFFORD

UNITY -- William Hafford's final product will be graded, almost assuredly by a Unity College faculty member, sometime during the course of the next several days. But the true measure of the success of Hafford's independent study project will come from a much tougher critic.

The more than 700 miles of the rugged Northern Forest Canoe Trail will issue Hafford's traditional wood-canvas Maine Guide Canoe a grade of pass or fail. It took more than eight months from the time the notion was first born last summer to complete the building process in the wee hours of Wednesday night, but Hafford isn't worried.

He knows he's succeeded.

"I love paddling, and I love the traditional part of canoeing and its history," Hafford said. "To me, it's about the idea of taking a canoe and going on an expedition trip with it -- that was how it was done hundreds of years ago. The canoe was the vehicle and our waterways were our highways."

Under the tutelage of Island Falls Canoe founder Jerry Stelmok, Hafford spent every available minute this winter and early spring coming to understand how to craft the kind of canoe that Native Americans first perfected centuries ago.

This week, the gorgeous 18-foot, wood-canvas canoe was on display in Unity College's student activities center, a magnet for anyone who appreciated either the technical or the aesthetic doors the craft opened.

Maine roots

The wood-canvas canoe originated here in Maine, said Jerry Stelmok, noting that it got its design from the birch bark canoe used by Native Americans. While there may be lighter and stronger modern materials at the boat-builder's fingertips in today's world, the longevity of the wood-canvas canoe speaks to its important place on the water -- particularly here in New England and eastern Canada.

"It's a truly indigenous watercraft," Stelmok said. "There are a lot of American watercraft, but this one was one that stemmed from Native American technology instead of adapting European technology. That makes it a uniquely American thing in terms of its technology."

The wood-canvas canoe, as its name implies, is made of wood and canvas. The boat's structure is made of white cedar, shaped over a solid "form." Unlike a mold, the form is removed from the boat's hull when constructed, not the other way around. A single layer of canvas is tightly wrapped around the hull before it is finished and painted.

The Maine Guide Canoe is either 18 1/2 feet or 20 feet long. The 18 1/2 foot model weighs less than 80 pounds.

"Obviously, it's proven itself and been tested," Hafford said of the Maine Guide model. "Guides aren't gentle with their boats; they're workhorses. They've been adopted today because they're so well used.

"It's all done with natural resources, woods that have proven over centuries to work. Aside from Kevlar, it's incredibly hard to beat the size-to-weight ratio of a wood-canvas canoe."

Stelmok, a 60-year-old Auburn native now living and working in Atkinson, said he's built more than 500 wood-canvas canoes during the last two and a half decades. Nothing about them surprises him.

"You're building something that's very complex when it's finished, but it's made of about 50 steps that are really very simple, really," Stelmok said. "Every time one comes off the form, you never get tired of looking at them. They're always elegant and beautiful and you can't help but be inspired by them."

Sore fingers, sweet boat

William Hafford certainly was.

A California native who grew up in Monmouth before attending Unity College, by his own admission, wasn't a hard-core paddling enthusiast before arriving at the tiny little central Maine campus. But he had only been at Unity for a matter of days when he was bit by the canoeing bug.

Part of an orientation trip, he joined a group for a canoe expedition on the St. Croix River.

"That was one of the major points in my love of canoeing," said Hafford, noting that there's something about the serene pace of a river paddle he identifies with.

Last summer, while at the Bangor Folk Festival, he met somebody from Island Falls Canoe. The idea to build his own was born -- and the fact he could spend half of his senior year at Unity working on the project only made it more enticing.

So he learned about ribs and gunwales, stems and canvas, filler and sandpaper. Lots of sandpaper.

"You get to the point where your hands can't take it anymore," he said of the repetitive sanding steps required in building the wood-canvas canoe. "Your thumbs get tender and you can't even feel them."

Once his Maine Guide model was wrapped in canvas and began to be sealed with a thick, gray substance resembling a driveway sealer, the project came to life for him.

"That's where it starts looking like a boat and you start getting excited about it," he said.

Once he added his custom seat, angled for whitewater paddling, and his own shellac to the bottom of the water line he carefully measured out himself, even his raw fingertips were enthusiastic.

Keeping with tradition

"It's good to have young people involved with this," Stelmok said, noting that a small, albeit strong, core of wood-canvas canoe enthusiasts exist across the country, with Maine and maritime Canada serving as the hub.

"Most older people have migrated back to wood-canvas canoes because they have memories as young people of having been around them. It's important for young people now to have some of the same memories."

Hafford can't imagine using anything but a wood-canvas canoe, both for its versatility and reliability and for its historic significance.

"That the process is still there is amazing," said Hafford, who will make a new set of wood-canvas memories for himself this spring. "There's a quality to the perseverance and the craftsmanship. There are people out there keeping this tradition alive, and I honestly can't imagine getting a synthetic boat for a couple hundred bucks. It isn't even in the same realm as a wood-canvas one."

As a graduation gift to themselves, Hafford and his girlfriend plan to paddle the entire 740-mile Northern Forest Canoe Trail, from Old Forge, N.Y., to Fort Kent.

While Hafford's new canoe will make its maiden voyage along the route, it won't be the first Island Falls wood-canvas canoe to do that. Donnie Mullins made the first trip along the Northern Forest Canoe Trail in a a wood-canvas canoe from Island Falls.

"Its one purpose in life is to be paddled," Hafford said. "Each part is specially crafted to be paddled, to go down rivers and bounce off rocks. It's not built to look good, it's built to be used.

"The looking good is just an excellent by-product of that."