Friday, March 2, 2007

Black Boats Makes Landfall

The day I met with Lindsay Murray to talk about Black Boats, the project he is undertaking with fellow local boatsman John Baster, the harbour was still and glassy.
Becalmed on Cross Wharf at Harbour to Ocean restaurant over crema as viscous-looking as the ocean waters aft, I started to appreciate the subtleties of this new project.
Ostensibly a boat-building enterprise which began with the construction of a coracle for last year's inaugural Southern Hemisphere coracle race, Black Boats has since stretched and yawned into life as something resembling a philosophy.
Lindsay is talking Celtic roots, handcrafts, and re-establishing respect for nature's whims and powers.
His phrases are peppered with references to earlier, darker times in our history when provisions may have been scant but imaginative sustenance more plentiful.
"What it suggests to me is first of all, we all have our own whakapapa. You might not know it but it's there, it has to be."
That's him beginning to explain Black Boats. He says his interest in cultural origins began about 20 years ago. The foundations for Black Boats were laid then.
"It's about organic boats. It's about boats that have virtually zero carbon footprint, if you want. "They don't use fuel and oil. They might use one tree, but you don't have to cut down the whole forest.
"It's Celtic philosophy. It is about growing up and there being darkness, being the possibility of goblins and elves lurking in the trees.
"And then it's also about having fun. The whole idea of the coracles is anyone can do it."
Lindsay's DIY approach blends and extends into other traditional craft-based lifestyles.
"It incorporates other crafts - blacksmiths, green wood working, stone walls - it's real crofting. That still exists to a degree in Moeraki: a simple means of existence.
"When you think of pre-industrial times there were only really two types of people: those that fished and the rest (who) were involved in farmwork. Then you had the merchants and city people, but in fact most people would have been land and sea-based."
The traditional boats project is an attempt to recapture some of the essence of those times, predicated upon division by nature.
Black Boats is part of the paring back and slowing down of days, he adds.
"This is a step, I wouldn't say backwards, but sideways. It is about tribalism."
Ideals aside, the project has two concrete aims for the next three months. Construction of a curragh, or ancient three-man boat, is already underway at Lindsay's workshop in Kakanui, and he and John hope to organise a curragh event at Oamaru harbour for like-minded Celtic revivalists from around the regions.
"We've got about three or four teams of people that would like to race them. We would go out through the harbour and out to sea."
They expect the first curragh to be completed within a month, but say one could probably be made within a week under a full-time commitment.They'll eventually move on to building the kind of boats used in colonial New Zealand.
"What will happen is there will be further developments in Black Boats which will then cut across and have iconic New Zealand boats; very simple workman boats."

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