The Periwinkle and Stargazer Blog

Now I only wish perhaps that this was the history behind the name but I'd have to say that if it wasn't before (I didn't name the boat) I'm going to make an executive decision here and make it so now :)

Anyways, I've been reading a few books I got from the library recently and one of them called "Ray Mears, Northern Wilderness" got me hooked and I just about finished it in a half day here. This book was published with BBC, if you know who Ray Mears is then you'd probably know that, and it's not only quite well written but the content is really interesting too. Essentially it's about the history of the "northern wilderness", which is primarily Canada but includes a bit of history of northern US too.

Going way back in time to talk about early explorers and pioneers that essentially discovered Canada and parts of the US through traveling across wide expanses of wilderness. Learning to live off the land and working well with the natives was essential in this process and Ray constantly talks about what makes a successful pioneer and tells the stories of many that came before us to make up the Hudson's Bay Company and many others that made the great north what it is today.

To go with that there was one guy named David Thompson. He was a very studious and accomplished individual that did an extraordinary amount of mapping and cartography along with charting of seaways/waterways and the such. He's quoted in the book to be recognized as "the greatest land geographer ever" being that he seems to have mapped nearly five million square kilometers of North America by the age of 42.

His maps were so well done that they stayed in existence and were used by the Canadian government and railway companies for the next 100 years.

Anyways my point to this story is that he was dubbed by the natives as Koo-Koo-Sint, which means what? Stargazer. Appropriate I think, and now I'd like to think that I too would like to think of the boat in memory of somebody so cool as to accomplish so much in such a short time.

That's my short story, perhaps you'll be interested to find out more about Sir David Thompson and the many people that he also worked with, like Samuel Hearne who is another great pioneer in the great north. Definitely a worthwhile read.

This entry was posted on June 25, 2010 at 10:27 PM and has received 174 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

To kick off the series about the details of the pieces and equipment and just in general cool stuff going on the boat, I've decided to start with the stove.

Now, I suppose a stove doesn't sound so interesting. If you're a boat person then you may think you've already got a good bead on what could possibly make it into a boat. I beg to differ a bit here, mainly because this particular stove actually has an interesting story behind it.

To start this story though we'll have to turn back the pages of time about.. umm.. 25 years or so I think. Way back when Terry was just a young guy and hunting around for parts and stuff for his boat.

It just so happened when he started the boat he had a Dickinson Pacific diesel fuel stove with a heater. It was a good stove, served him well but wasn't kerosene. For the Periwinkle only the best would do and in Terry's mind the best didn't happen to be a diesel stove with a cabin heater. Being a pleasure boater Terry doesn't board his boat unless the sun is out and he can dance around naked on the thing, so a heater wasn't important.

So as he was searching around for a stove he happened to come across an ad in the buy and sell where a couple actually were trying to get rid of a Shipmate 3 burner kerosene stove which was still installed on the boat. So he stole it! No, just kidding. He showed up and started talking and asked what they were going to replace it with. Well, wouldn't you believe it but they wanted a diesel stove with a heater. Terry just so happened to have one of those, and without further ado Terry brought his diesel one over, uninstalled the kerosene one, installed the diesel one and that was that.

What a coincidence, and great timing for the both of them. So keep that in mind that opportunity can truly strike at anytime.

You may be wondering on how I came about this gem of information. Well, if you root around in Terry's barn long enough you're bound to find something of interest. I had found the stove during one of these times and asked him about it. Hence the above story.

Here are a couple of pics in case you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about:

Now this is the moment to take quick notice of a couple of things. This stove has been sitting around for a very long time! But it's not all rusted out, and if you were to open up the oven part (it's got an oven!), it's bright shiny stainless steel. Very good. Hardly used I think.

You may also notice on the sides of the stove that there are a couple of posts sticking out with clamps. These are used to actually let the stove pivot on them so that when the boat is heeled over that the stove will stay upright. The bottom of the stove actually has a huge lead weight in it so that it's bottom heavy. I can atest to that.. that stove is definitely heavy.

Last but not least, being that there is a lot of movement on a boat there are rods going around the edge of the top of the stove. These are in place so that it's possible to sort of clamp on pots and pans. At the very least you can stop them from moving back and forth with rods that clamp onto those rods. It'll be neat to see it in action.

So that's the end of our first part in the has-to-be-many-parts of detailing the interior pieces and equipment. Terry's got a lot of cool stuff and I'm sure they all have some kind of story to go with them. As I discover them or they come out of the corners of the house or barn then I'll get some pics and post here.

On a side note, we're doing more work on the boat this Sunday. If you're interested in seeing how we are doing or exactly what we are doing then please stop in and say hi. Thanks to everybody who has already stopped in and given some great compliments. We're always happy to hear those.

This entry was posted on August 10, 2007 at 1:39 PM and has received 151 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Terry has so nicely lent me some pictures to scan and upload to the blog to hopefully give some insight into the boat's history. I can't tell many stories about it so we'll be relying on Terry to pop in and post a few, but in the meantime take a look at this picture from over 20 years ago of the bow.

and here it is now (as seen in a past entry):

many more pictures coming around the bend, but I thought this might be interesting to see until then. These pictures are in an envelope labelled 1983 or Sept, but oddly enough they seem to be pictures of different stages of the build. So for now I'm guessing at 1983. Let's see what Terry thinks though.

Speaking of Terry, how about this picture:

This entry was posted on April 20, 2007 at 10:11 AM and has received 144 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.