About VAKA
VAKA is one person building boats from natural materials, testing what works, and documenting it honestly.
The project has three elements that feed into each other:
The builds. Skin on frame canoes, catamarans, proas — designed, built, tested, and if they pass that test, drawn up and released as plans. The construction is documented publicly as it happens, failures included. Nothing is built that hasn't been sailed. Nothing is sold that hasn't worked.
The field notes. Investigations into traditional materials and methods — linseed oil, Stockholm tar, oilskins, canvas proofing, natural cordage, weather reading, ancestral navigation. Not conclusions dressed as advice, but experiments in progress. Here's what I tried. Here's what happened. Here's what the old sources say and where they conflict with each other or with field results. The goal is a distilled reference — the VAKA Compendium — where experiments that hold up long enough become the record. That work is underway. The field notes are where it's being done.
The books. By Hand and Water — a series of three books, three vessels, three voyages with genuine stakes. The first is in build now. The builds documented on this site are the same builds that become the books. The field notes are the research. The voyages will happen whether the books exist or not. The books are the account of something real, not a project designed to produce a book.
The Hithe Finder. A community-led register of boat launching sites — slipways, hards, and beaches across the UK and beyond. The information existed in fragments across books, forums, outdated websites, and local knowledge that never got written down. The Hithe Finder compiles it in one searchable register. People add sites, flag closures, update access details. It is free to use because the people launching boats should not have to pay to find out where they can launch them.
Why natural materials.
A boat built from wood, canvas, hemp, and linseed oil composts when you're done with it. A boat built from synthetic resins and fibreglass does not. That difference is not marginal. It is the central question the work addresses.
The choice of natural materials is not nostalgia and not aesthetics. It is a technical decision about what a boat should be made of if the person building it cares what happens to it after its working life ends. The materials have been understood for longer than written record. The techniques work. The knowledge nearly disappeared in the second half of the twentieth century when synthetic materials became cheaper and easier. VAKA exists to document that knowledge before it is entirely gone, and to prove through actual use that it still works.
Who this is for.
People building boats who want plans from someone who has sailed what they are drawing.
People already on the water who want to use fewer synthetics, understand more of what they are doing, and leave less behind when they are done.
People who think the experiences worth having are the ones that leave something in the hands and the memory of whoever was alongside.
Where it's going.
The canoe plans are coming and will be free. As soon as its ready, Download it. Build one. Follow the cat build. Read the field notes. The compendium is coming when the experiments have run long enough to justify conclusions. The first book is coming when the boat is built and the voyage is made. The rest follows from there.
None of it is finished. That's the point.
VAKA. Nottingham. 2026.