2018 was a year of contrast and polarities. On one hand Cape Falcon Kayak is thriving and on the other I'm still dug in on the front lines in the trench warfare against some pretty serious health issues. I've got a lot of good to talk about this year so lets get the bad out of the way first. For those of you just tuning into these updates the short version of a very long story is that I suffer from a continually worsening lifelong condition that seems to center around problems with blood flow, nerve function, and metabolism. What was a nuisance in my younger years has slowly evolved into a life consuming slow-motion disaster.
The general view right now among myself and various doctors I see is that this may be some sort of inborn metabolic error that is slowly poisoning me as my body tries to make energy, but that is far from certain until I can get the right testing to differentiate that from a host of other possibilities. Those of you who follow my site know that getting these tests has been difficult to a degree that would have to be experienced to be believed. The combined forces of lack of physician education, an institutional culture of psychiatric suspicion, shortage of relevant experts, ineffectual grievance channels, and insurance obstacles all synergize to make getting a competent metabolic evaluation one of the most difficult things to accomplish in the American medical system right now. I could fill pages with examples that would make your brain explode, but that doesn't really accomplish anything so I'll just say that I'm still trying my best to navigate the challenges and hopefully 2019 will see more progress than 2018. Owing to the success of my online video courses I was finally able to afford better insurance this year so hopefully that will help move things forward. In the meantime it's just a savage, brutal experience, but I'm committed to hanging in there for as long as I can take the pain.
Moving on to brighter subjects. There are so many exciting things happening at Cape Falcon Kayak this year that I almost don't know where to begin. We are just starting to get this whole video thing dialed in and are producing higher quality content in more places than ever before. First up is my YouTube channel where I've posted over 50 videos in 50 weeks. How to videos, trip reports, paddling tips, all the latest stuff we are working on. We've got some gorgeous videos up right now of some of our latest building and paddling adventures that are certain to inspire uncontrollable boat lust, you've been warned.
The next place I'm putting up a ton of content is on Instagram. I have to admit that I still don't really use Facebook, and I'll never own a twitter account, but as curmudgeonly as I am when it comes to electronic timewasting platforms, I have slowly fallen in love with Instagram. If you curate your feed carefully and don't just follow everyone, you can keep up to date with some pretty great projects and fun eye candy. To that effect we are trying to do our part to keep things fresh, interesting, and pretty with the @capefalconbuilds Instagram feed. This is where you can see the latest thing I'm building in the shop, and I've even done you the service of separating my personal feed so you don't have to see what I made for dinner last night or 5000 pictures of my cat.
Social media stuff aside, we have also been growing our own interactive student platform on the site called Blog Your Build, where we offer discounted plans to students who are willing to upload photos and text of their build process. It's fun for me because it allows me to participate in what is essentially a virtual classroom, and it helps connect builders to each other and build excitement. The other cool feature is the map, which I have to admit is just neat because I get to see where the boats are being built. If you have a Cape Falcon Boat or you are building, don't be afraid to use the map, we don't share any of your information!
Overall the biggest accomplishment of 2018 has been the design and release of a brand new canoe building system. The canoe project has been a massive undertaking, where we not only built 15 canoes in 8 months, but we also pioneered a brand new type of building that is formula based, allowing you to rapidly build ANY canoe you want without building molds or strong backs. In addition to the formula based system these canoes are built in a new way that allows them to be catamaran together, carry a small integrated sail, and be nested like Russian dolls! I am immensely proud of what we accomplished this year and am salivating for the coming years refinements of this new branch of skin-on-frame. For those of you who really want to go down the rabbit hole, there is a 14 part video series on youtube where I documented the entire process of designing these canoes, as well as just a couple lovely little movies we made about tripping in them.
The creation of the online canoe building course ushers in a new level of professionalism here at Cape Falcon Kayak. We've leveled up in lighting, video quality, delivery platform, graphic design, basically every aspect of what we do here. With that foundation in place I'm really excited to see what we can accomplish in coming years. Right now the course is listed as a "Beta Version" which means that it costs half as much. The idea of beta releases is new for us and differs from our normal mode of working on something obsessively for 5 or more years before releasing it. With 'beta' you get 80% of the quality, at half the price, 4 years early. I think that's a good deal, and we've even sweetened it by offering free plans and courses to anyone willing to build new versions of any design idea. It's a collective design process that extends my reach so you don't have to wait forever for each new thing, but preserves the same obsessive quality that Cape Falcon is known for.
Overall, the online courses are going really well. I've been slowly re-shooting the kayak building course to bring the production quality more in line with our newer products, and also adding a decent amount of free content as well. It's important for me to offer free trials of all our paid courses so people can really dig in and decide if they like something before they make a purchase. Additionally, I've added some free courses just for the heck of it, including a very popular free hour long Greenland Paddle building class. You can find our classes under the Store tab on our website.
Beyond the online courses 2018 has seen a big spike in custom boat orders so we've brought my good friend Tom Moen onto the team as our primary kayak builder. Tom is an accomplished boatbuilder in his own right and has worked on some of our most ambitious projects including my Japanese Forest House and Japanese bath house. Tom is literally the only person I've ever found whose building standards exceed my own, making him the only person I trust to build my commissions. Thanks to Tom, we have gotten our backlog for custom boats down to about a month and the boats we are sending out these days are even NICER than the ones I make. Below are few photos of recent work and some great photos of Tom I found in the archive from our most difficult project, a 2/3 scale historic Inuit replica kayak built with no power tools completely out of hand milled wood, hide rope, and salvaged materials. This kayak shape is from the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay.
The other person who deserves a huge thank you this year is my girlfriend Liz who's tireless technical support and graphic design work literally makes Cape Falcon Kayak possible. While I'm in the shop screwing around with sticks and fabric, Liz manages our YouTube channel, our Instagram, our Thinkific platform, our Weebly site, our Wordpress site, our old Laughing Squid site, and our Shopify platform, so they all talk to each other without crashing. Additionally Liz is consolidating the technical disaster I created before her arrival into a new site to get everything under one roof and preserve the old Cape Falcon archives. We should be launching in January so keep an eye out for the awesome new website. Thank you Liz, I couldn't do this without you.
In addition to the stuff we are up to here at the shop, I want to make sure to mention two other very cool adventures involving our boats. First up is my friends Tom and Kyle of the non-profit organization The Weight We Carry who are CARRYING SKIN ON FRAME CANOES TO THE MOUNT EVEREST BASE CAMP RIGHT NOW to raise money for the construction of a new shelter in Kathmandu, Nepal through an organization called KOSHISH which provides support for women who are victims of sex trafficking, domestic abuse, and mental health issues. Tom and Kyle are men of tremendous integrity, funding their expedition with their own money (tens of thousands of dollars) and every cent they raise goes directly to the cause. They impressed me enough that I donated two brand new skin-on-frame canoes for them to carry, and made a cash donation. Check out Tom and Kyle on their website The Weight We Carry, and consider making a sizable donation. You can also follow them on Instagram. They started climbing a couple days ago and will be posting videos and pictures on Instagram all month as they trek 120 miles up to 18,000 feet carrying 70 lbs of gear apiece. Instagram pictures remain posted, but the video stories only stay up the day they are posted, so it's fun to go look everyday and watch the climb. Please follow and support Tom and Kyle.
Another exciting adventure that's starting late spring is artist, photographer, and adventurer Claire Dibble's journey down the entire length of the mighty Columbia River in a Cape Falcon Kayak F1 that she is currently building. This 1200 mile journey from Canal Flats, BC, to Astoria, Oregon, is part expedition, part artistic exploration, part historic journey. You can sign up on her site for updates, or just follow along as the journey progresses. She's posted some beautiful photos of her build on her site.
To finish things up on a boatbuilding note, the canoe project success has emboldened me to once again set my sights on creating a decent skin-on-frame rowing/sailing beach cruiser. Built in any medium, the beach cruiser is one of those romantic notions that never seems to live up to its promise as evidenced by the thousands of them that are presently dying long slow deaths on backyard trailers across the globe. The issue is always the same, as soon as you make a boat small enough to be handy it's too small to be seaworthy, but as soon as you make it big enough to be seaworthy, it's so cumbersome that you never end up using it. Skin-on-frame offers the tantalizing possibility of surmounting the weight issue, but comes with a host of other challenges. I seem to run a cycle of hope and disillusionment with the row/sail dream, turning out a boat every few years that is close but never quite right, mixing the same simple ingredients in hopes of finding some new way to cheat the laws of physics. Time will tell if I ever manage to find the right recipe, but to start the year off right I've built a lovely set of oars, so at the very least for once I won't have to sheepishly wait a week after building the boat to actually use it! Regardless of the outcome I'm sure the process with be entertaining.
To follow my progress in 2019 you can check us out on the Cape Falcon Website but truthfully, YouTube and Instagram are where most of the action happens these days, so check us out on those platforms and don't forget to follow Tom and Kyle from The Weight We Carry as they hike canoes into the Himalayas, and Claire Dibble as well.
I'm going to sign off this year by reviving the tradition of the best photos of 2018. If you've read this far, you've earned it! Thanks for your support. Be well. Happy new year.
I'm going to sign off this year by reviving the tradition of the best photos of 2018. If you've read this far, you've earned it! Thanks for your support. Be well. Happy new year.
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