Low-Tech Catamaran

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A year or so ago, a large pine tree fell into one of the main channels of our lagoon, blocking boat access. The county finally decided to remove it. I thought they’d get a crane, but the tree company hit upon this ingenious low-tech solution: a two-canoe catamaran, decked with 2×4s and plywood, which they loaded up with chunks of the tree, then had their boat pulled with a rope to an access point, where they loaded the wood onto a truck.

Reminds me of the many ingenious low-tech workarounds I’ve seen in Mexico, like a crowbar made out of rebar, or fishermen whose gear amounts to a bottle wrapped with fishing line; they go to the beach with this in their pocket, then spool the line off the bottle twirl it around their head and cast into the surf.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

2 Responses to Low-Tech Catamaran

  1. whaddabout the poly nesians tht sat around looking at the boat that washed up on the beach until it was in clear focus then removed all the extra wood until all that remained was a beautiful dynamic hull. the plastic kayak culture bucked up the flotsam int rounds for shingles or firewood spliter…what will the 22 century have in store for the adapted beachcomber … science fiction … show the double hulled kayak picture to the 8year old barefoot kid,that was my grandfather, from lassen county 1909 and give him a half hour to guess what this photo
    actually is…
    …ambrose…

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