Make A Tule boat, Fremont

I saw this in the Tri-city Voice and tought someone might be interested.  Check this article out!  I think paddling one of these around would be fun.  I hope this link works.

http://www.tricityvoice.com/

I've made these before with my dad.  In fact, my dad was one of the guys that made and paddled across the bay on a tule boat the "Kon-Tule".  In double fact, my dad may be helping out with the boat building that you linked to....I'll call him and ask.

MolBasser

Looks fun.  Just needs a coat of fiberglass...

They're total pigs, but I did catch a fish on one when I was a kid.  A little bluegill, but it was a fish.

MolBasser

Well, at least transducer mounting is probably no problem--just lash it to the underside 

what do you call a surf launch wipe out though. A Salad! ROTFL I kill myself, really ROTFL 

My friend and neighbor Linda is a native American and has built several of these boats.  One is on display at the Monterey Maritime Museum.  When she first built one, it was under some tarps in her yard and she caught me snooping.  It turned out she had never paddeled one so I offered a PDF and paddels and I was the first one to paddel one of her boats.  We did it in the Monterey harbor and had some good press coverage at the time.  They are fun but real pigs to paddel as mentioned earlier.  They are also a wet ride and tend to hydrate and ride lower in the water the longer you use them.  None the less it was really fun to use one and get my photo in the paper.  Linda now grows the reeds in her yard and also has permission from the Dept. of Interior to collect reed from their land on Ft. Ord. 

Those are so so cool. Well, at least we know what to do if the polyethene supply ever dries up. Now, how do I make a tule PFD?