A piece of Junk Sail- pt3 of the Ulua Proa project

Lookit!

I know, I know. You see a kid, Cheez-its, a tarp and a pole.

I SEE a sail, mast, hard-tack and my galley-slave-er-I-mean-second-mate... Yeah.

Ok, so the sail is just a tarp. It's a $30 heavy duty tarp that we cut into the right shape and then sewed "cambers" or darts into to give the sail a bit of a shape. I still need to reinforce all the edges and corners.  We were going to make the sail out of cotton but I think it will mildew if we don't get it perfectly dry every time. And that's annoying. Someday I'll drop the money into nice sail cloth but for now, all that money needs to go towards the actual boat.

I did discover that my sewing machine does NOT like the UV stabilized poly thread that I'm using. Then my husband tried to use it to make a button hole on a different project. Heh. That didn't work. Its good stuff that will hold up to the sun's violence, but its just thick.

The mast is a 12' aluminum windsurfing mast that I got on Ebay for $50. I'm not certain it will be tall enough to allow for the boom (the wood pole at the bottom of the sail) to clear our heads, so we might make a modified stub sail like this.

Why? Because I don't like concussions. 

The other thing I purchased of interest recently was three shark teeth. This is quite random, but so am I so don't worry about it.

I got one for each of our small family and I intend to sand down the edges a little so they're not as dangerous then mount them on the bow. See that little nubby thing on the tip of the boat? That's called the manu and sometimes its quite elaborate. Therefore, that means I get to have some fun!!

At first I wanted to put a dragon head on the bow, Viking style, cuz I'm a Viking. But then, considering that this is a Pacific Island boat, the Norse Firedrake didn't seem appropriate. So my mind wandered back to the time we sojurned at the Polynesian Culteral Center in Hawaii and visions of weaponry burst forth upon my minds eye. Sorry, the mention of Norse Mythology sometimes causes me to wax poetic. I'm done now.

We saw many examples of weapons like this. A tribal man's brass knuckles and dagger combo.

Carved wood, with shark's teeth lashed to a groove in the edges to create a beautiful weapon that I wouldn't want to be attacked with. For a pre-metal society, these were probably very effective. Well, I've always been fascinated by the history of weaponry, so incorporating something like this seemed appropriate to me.

The only challenge is to do it in a way so we don't damage ourselves on the teeth. This will be fun.