Kiliii’s article, 31 days of Rice, Butter and Ligcod, is featured in the December issue of Sea Kayaker magazine. If you haven’t seen it, check it out!
August of 2008, at four in the afternoon, I pushed my skin-on-frame kayak out into the northern waters of Vancouver Island, loaded with rice, butter, Clif Bars and not much more, really. 30 days later I landed 315 miles away on the western coast, happy to be alive, having survived 40 knot winds, 12 ft swells, upset sea lions, a bear’s nose, and countless sea otters with their ridiculously cute pups. I stayed amazingly healthy feasting off the ocean’s critters and wild edible plants. The verdict? The best thing I have ever done in my life. And I’d do it again.
The first time you ever plunge a knife into the skin of your kayak, you wince. Eventually you’ll find it’s quite fun!
So the wind has now stolen two kayaks off my roof and claimed an entire rack plus random parts of others. That’s what you get when you drag sails (skin-on-frame kayaks) around atop your car. I decided to tackle the beast horns-first, and luckily my friend Patrick Farneman armed me with a welder and enough just knowledge to do some damage.
Our recent workshop in Teton, Idaho, resulted in some rather beautiful boats. Many thanks to David Wescott for hosting us at his beautiful hand-built mortice-and-tenon barn.
The incredible vast and rugged beauty of western Vancouver Island, B.C. can be compared to few places in the world. So in July 2010 Seawolf took a group out for an 8-day SOF kayak expedition. 
The calf rose up to the surface and rolled under again and again. Its mother swam alongside and then periodically, WHOOSH, blew a long column of water vapor into the salty air. My kayak’s skin reverberated with the blast, and I could feel it through my legs. At times, I could almost see the orcas pass underneath my translucent hull…
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) asked us at Seawolf to do an exhibition on skin-on-frame boats, both kayaks and umiaks. It turned out to be an amazing weekend around Christmas in the featured hall, as we occupied some 2000 square feet with kayaks and had about 3000 people stop by to check out the exhibit.
In 2006 and 2007, Kiliii Yu of Seawolf and Brian Schulz from Cape Falcon began a unique project– The construction of a driftwood-framed kayak with hide covering. We finished it and skinned it traditional Greenland-style. The kayak Anqeti made the front cover of the November 2008 Bulletin of Primitive Technology.
