Proasis at Kiel Climate Week

Proasis will be part of the first Climate Week hosted by the City of Kiel. We will be present with our canoe at the waterfront doing some panel discussions and taking people out for a sail.

Everybody is very welcome to join us for the talking part on land but the space on our boat is limited. Please visit the website of the organizers and make a reservation to catch a ride on proasis.

Performance Measurement

Henrik hast developed a data logger to collect performance data for polar plots for the GIZ implemented Marshall Islands project on low carbon sea transport. The loggers collects samples of GPS speed, heading and wind speed and direction simultaneously. The data is collected and will be processed soon!

It is planned to test the device on traditional canoes too.

News from Oversea

WAM, the NGO in the Marshall Islands we support as part of the TLCSeaT project, recently got a high visitor interested in the latest achievements of canoe construction:

A pleasant surprise at the open canoe-house day was the visit of the Hon. Minister of Transport, Communication and
Information Technology, Donald Capelle who came accompanied by his wife and granddaughter. A canoe sailor himself, he was exited to learn more about the latest canoes launched by WAM:
Unlike any other craft in the RMI, WAM’s latest canoe was built with stitch & glue technology. This new technique to construct canoe hulls has been introduced by the GIZ (German International Corporation) funded project “Transitioning to Low Carbon Sea Transport” (or TLCSeaT) as part of a prototype workshop at WAM in January to April 2020 (see previous post on proas.is).
Stitch & Glue is an advanced technique to build plywood canoes, not unlike the traditional way for dugout canoes, but adapted to the “new“ plywood material. The individual parts are first stitched together, brought in shape and glued into place permanently by glue from epoxy resin. Due to the perfect adaptation to the characteristics of the plywood and the superior strength of epoxy as glue, the stitch & glue canoes are substantially lighter and stronger than their previous counterparts. Further benefits are a faster construction (a hull is completed in less than a week) and an expected lifetime of at least 20 years if well maintained.

Stitched canoe hull, ready to get glued. Stitching is clearly visible in the bow area.
Finished stitch & glue canoe, first of its kind in the RMI, ready to launch.

WAM plans to host more training workshops on contemporary canoe building in the future as part of the TLCSeaT project in a close collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Transport, MISC, HEL (University of Emden-Leer) and GIZ. Starting with the next workshop in mid-February, the long-term goal is to train Marshallese canoe builder in the new construction technique to replace as many fossil fuel powered boats as possible by canoes.

In a community effort, WAM will put RMI in a leading position of the worldwide effort to reduce the CO 2 emissions of the shipping sector. Updated for the future, the traditional Marshallese canoe, still the best craft for RMI’s waters,
is ready to meet the requirements of the 21 st century and sails towards a new golden age.

We from proasis are proud to be part of this story!

Boats launched in Majuro

After an intense but great time in the WAM workshop both prototype designs were launched round about 6 weeks after they were started. A detailed explanation covering the construction of the WAM Cat will follow soon on this site so stay tuned 😉

Now its time for sea trials in the beautiful Majuro lagoon. Wait for some videos!

WAM Cat design
WAM Cat design
WAM Cat and Proa maiden sail
WAM Cat on anchor in front of the WAM campus

Transitioning to Low Carbon Sea Transport

As promised in the previous posts we would like to explain in detail what exactly proas.is supports in the Marshall Islands:

Under the umbrella of a big Climate Change project called “Transitioning to Low Carbon Sea Transport” (short TLCSeaT, funded by the German Government and implemented by GIZ) we work together with the local NGO “WAM” on a revival of traditional and contemporary sailing canoes in the Pacific outer islands. The island people have a high demand on fossil fuel free transport means (fuel is ridiculous expensive) but rely mostly on outboard engine powered boats. The native sailing and canoe building skills (you can see a traditional sailing canoe in the video of the previous post) were lost in some places due to american colonization.

To change that, we teach selected Marshallese how to build high quality plywood boats with contemporary materials. Henrik is holding a 3 month boat building and sailing course together with Rob Denney from HarryProa.

Within the workshop 2 new designs will be build:

Mini Cargo Proa

The mini cargo proa is a very easy to build design by Rob Denney (HarryProa). It is explained in detail on his marvelous website.

WAM Catamaran

The WAM catamaran is a basic 20ft double canoe with V shaped hulls, build in stitch and glue technic. It was designed in 2018 by Henrik in collaboration with the boys at WAM.

Main requirement is to carry 6 bags of copra (dried coconut meat) in each hull, that’s close to 1000kg payload all together. A nice side effect of that is the spacious interior (for a 20ft cat). 2 adults can easy sleep inside (4 if they like each other) and the cabin offers enough headroom to sit upright. Passenger transport and fishing trips will be a pleasure.

For reasons of simplicity a traditional Marshallese sail is used (in the western world known as “crab claw”). It can be made from anything between polytarp and dacron on a domestic sewing machine, doesn’t require shape (in fact its flat) and offers great performance (better than most cruising sails). On top, the mast design doesn’t put any tension on the cross beams.

The entire catamaran can be build in 3-4 weeks on a budget of approx. 2000 USD. We will come up with a separate information page about the construction and some sailing footage soon!

Traditional outrigger canoe sailing

Henrik and Rob are busy with their trainees at the boat building workshop (details what exactly they do follow soon!) all day.

But after work it’s time for sailing:

The traditional Marshallese canoes are the fastest native boat designs on the planet. Once you get familiar with their unique characteristics (especially the shunting maneuver) its lots of fun!

The canoe in the video was made by students from plywood and local lumber. Everything is lashed, no metal is used. The material to build on cost only 500$