Thread: WWW (weird and wonderful world) of folding kayaks

this is great Viktor

Actually I went to the ANMM today to take some pictures of the Oscar Speck display and I will download these to the computer as soon as I can. But as we have a new iMac at home on which, for the life of me, I cannot upload pictures from iphoto to this site, it will have to wait till I get to work on Tuesday! All I can do is upload the whole of iphotos!, anyway....

There isn't a Pionier kayak in the display, just bits and pieces. There is a good film which is about 18 minutes or so. There are a few bits and pieces of his various kayaks and equipment, his passport, travel documents, diaries etc. There's also a nice little copper model of his kayak with a sail fitted that a fellow German internee made for him when they were in a internee camp in Victoria, during the War. Apparently he'd escaped from a camp in Queensland and got picked up in Victoria! There is a double paddle, a compass and whats left of one of his navigation lights.

Anyway, I'll post the pictures here as soon as I can.

Love the 200kg folding catamaran!

GregF

Hi Greg,

I am glad you liked it (the catamaran is really something else, talk about "folding kayak").

Concerning iPhoto:
I am Mac person myself, so maybe I can help.
If I got you right your problem is extracting individual pics from iPhoto to be able to upload them, right?

Easy, peasy, there are at least 2 ways to do this.

1. You "grab" a photo in the overview menu and just drag it out of iPhoto onto the desktop. This will generate a copy of the pic which is now sitting on the desktop.
Most probably with modern mega-pixel cameras this file will be too big and you'll have to resize it in Photshop or something if you got that.

2. There is an "Export" function in iPhoto (in my version, which is not very recent, it is in the "Share" menu).
You click on the photo (or a selection of photos) again, and open the export window.
This will allow you to choose the size and the format.

Hope this helps and I am looking forward to seeing the pics.

Viktor

Hello Viktor

Can't do No 1 as don't have photoshop and suggestion 2 I'll try again and thanks for the suggestions. Lets see if it works this time: well, no, it didn't. Beats me, I'll go in to a Mac shop today and see if I can get some help With the manage attachments system on this site I can't see how this works because when I try to drag the re-ized image from the desktop it just sits over the attachment window and doesn't allow you to actually attach the file! It's very frustrating actually, but thanks for the help!

Greg

I'll try something else this time, so if it works Viktor, can you identify this kayak design? I took this one at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart in 2009. The kayak is under the port bow of the James Craig - shame I missed the name and figurehead in the shot! Well, that worked! I have no excuse now - I'll get on to it asap.

Greg

Originally Posted by pindimar

I'll try something else this time, so if it works Viktor, can you identify this kayak design? I took this one at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart in 2009. The kayak is under the port bow of the James Craig - shame I missed the name and figurehead in the shot! Well, that worked! I have no excuse now - I'll get on to it asap.

Greg

Hi Greg,

1. Pics:
Glad it worked (by the way, you can do all basic manipulations of pictures also in "Preview", which is part of the standard Mac package).

2. "Can you identify this kayak design?"

I can only assume you are joking (I have been wanting to put some of these cute smilies into the text).
Just to make it very clear: I am not expert at all. I do have a Klepper Aerius II, but that's about it.
Having said that, and taking it as a sporting challenge, I am happy to have a go.

I have tried to blow up your picture a bit (not sure whether I'll manage to get it in here, we'll see).
It does look like a home-built skin-on-frame kayak to me.
And if you want me to make a guess: Well, Percy Blandford of course (after all, this is how we got into this).
Why:
- The style of the cockpit coaming (difficult to see, I admit).
- More importantly, see how the bow is swept back before it meets the deck (I am not at all certain about the technical terms, sorry; so I am talking about the front end).
This looks very "Percy Blandford" to me.

Compare to these pics from the Percy Blandford thread, especially the last image.
https://www.woodworkforums.com/f33/pe...ml#post1123889
(Post #48)

Maybe some of the Blandford experts can chip in here.

Looking forward to seeing your pictures about Oskar Speck,

cheers,

Viktor

Hi all,

A bit further up we were talking about the kayak-trip of Oskar Speck from Ulm in Germany to Australia; a seven-year voyage from 1932 to 1939.

Greg (Pindimar) has promised to post some info on the exhibits from the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

This was however not the only trip.

When I got interested in kayaking and folding kayaks in the 1980s, I came across a story of three (or four) guys paddling in folding kayaks from Ulm in Germany to Melbourne with the aim to arrive there for the opening of the 1956 Olympics.
I have absolutely no idea anymore where I read this, but it stuck in my mind.

So when Greg mentioned O Speck's voyage, I first thought that this was the same trip. But that was clearly earlier.

Searching on the Internet (it never ceases to amaze me how much easier this is nowadays...) I found out at least a little bit.

It was not only my imagination, the trip happened.
One of the paddlers was/is Heinz Sokoll. There were three or four of them starting out (I recall vaguely that one of them died on the trip, no idea about the circumstances).

Very obviously they were recreating the voyage of Oskar Speck.
They did arrive in Melbourne (no idea whether they made it in time for the Olympics). It took them 2 years; quite bit faster compared to O Speck.

There is hardly anything to find about this on the internet. However, there has been a very recent write-up of this trip in a small German folding-kayak magazine. I may have to try to get hold of this.

index

Now my question to you Aussies:
Is anything known about this trip in Australia at all ?

cheers,

Viktor

Hello Viktor and any interested Forumites,

Well that's a new one, maybe the NMM would be interested in following that story up too, Viktor.

AS you mentioned the pictures of the Oscar Speck exhibit, that will have to wait till tomorrow our time, Tuesday, when I get back to work and a PC. You see, I took the pictures at the Museum with my Nokia N8 phone camera (great camera) but Nokia don't support Macs jut yet, apparently. So will do that at work, in some free time.

I think that photo from the 2009 Festival was a smaller photo that I created so I'll go in and see of I can find the larger one:

GregF

The photos that I took are not very good at all, due to the low light and the fact that it is all behind glass, so the flash is an issue. Anyway, will go back with a dedicated digital camera rather than a phone camera to get some better pictures next time!

Buet here are some that are not too hard to see something useful:

GregF

here are a couple more pictures that may be of some help:
Greg

Originally Posted by pindimar

here are a couple more pictures that may be of some help:
Greg

Hi Greg,

Great, thanks a lot.
Pity there wasn't the actual kayak he arrived in.

But considering the circumstances (WW-II, internment, and the long time span), it is actually amazing that so many artifacts survived.

If you look in the internet, almost the only info on Oskar Speck you can find is the three-part article that KJL38 posted on the Percy Blandford thread.
https://www.woodworkforums.com/f33/pe...ml#post1291802

If you look for German language sites, there is even less. The wikipedia article is only a three line stub referring to the same article.

So it seems that the war also killed O Speck's story in Germany.
The Pionier-Faltboot company surely must have used him for publicity. And I am certain that the three or four guys who set out in 1954 were re-living his adventure. So there was some public knowledge of his voyage.
But very little survived to this day.
The Pionier-Falbootwerft existed from 1925 to 1971 in Bad Toelz, just south of Munich.

Here is another nice picture of a Pionier double with quite a dashing Ketch rig.

http://www.faltbootbasteln.de/pio21.jpg

Cheers,


Viktor
P.S. So nobody has ever heard anything about the 1954-1956 Germany-Melbourne paddle-trip? Amazing...

Hello Viktor,

There are a couple more pictures that I can put up although there is one that has a card displayed on it and all I can make out on it was that it was a German Workers organisation card addressed to Oscar Speck. But a client of mine who was in yesterday looked at it and said that it was an inviation to a talk by Oscar Speck at a German workers Forum or similar, so I've put that one up. Wonder what you think, Viktor? It is dated 1937 and, as far as I understand, Oscar Speck did not go back to Germany during that trip??

I'm aware that some people may not like seeking that pennant but it was the national flag at the time, after all. Sorry if this offends anybody, though. Besides, it's on display in the NMM and has been for some years. The card I am referring to is just above it.

The link to the picture of the Pionier boat in your last post is very good, extensive sailing rig, too. Now that would go "like the clappers" I would imagine. Thinking of that; did you notice in one of the signs that I posted, it indicated that Oscar Speck could not swim?!

Greg

Originally Posted by pindimar

Hello Viktor,

There are a couple more pictures that I can put up although there is one that has a card displayed on it and all I can make out on it was that it was a German Workers organisation card addressed to Oscar Speck. But a client of mine who was in yesterday looked at it and said that it was an inviation to a talk by Oscar Speck at a German workers Forum or similar, so I've put that one up. Wonder what you think, Viktor? It is dated 1937 and, as far as I understand, Oscar Speck did not go back to Germany during that trip??

I'm aware that some people may not like seeking that pennant but it was the national flag at the time, after all. Sorry if this offends anybody, though. Besides, it's on display in the NMM and has been for some years. The card I am referring to is just above it.

The link to the picture of the Pionier boat in your last post is very good, extensive sailing rig, too. Now that would go "like the clappers" I would imagine. Thinking of that; did you notice in one of the signs that I posted, it indicated that Oscar Speck could not swim?!

Greg

Hi,

You need to take better pictures, mate!

Seriously; yes it is an invitation for a talk given by O Speck, but I can't make out where (I am not even sure, if the location is spelled out somewhere).
It seems there is an description of the card at the bottom of the display case. You can just see the 1937.
It would indeed put a bit a different light on the trip, if O. Speck was able to interrupt his kayak trip to go back to Germany in between.
I did ask myself what he was doing during these 7 years. It's a long trip ok, but 7 years is also fairly long. He must also have lived of something during that time.

I am purely speculating here, but possibly the Pionier-Faltboot compay had something to do with it. Maybe it was a promotional trip. He must have been a tremendous advertisement for them.

That the Nazi organisations got into this, is also obvious. This is universally true for all totalitarian regimes. They are all-pervasive and try to control all aspects of life.

So the D.A.F (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, technically the Nazi trade union organisation) was also very heavily involved in organizing leisure activities for the German workers.
They even had their own special sub-organization for that called, Kraft durch Freude ("Strength through Joy"; wow, one does wonder which bright light thought this one up....).
O Speck would have been of tremendous publicity and propaganda value at the time ("German superhero braves waves and natives in exotic places all alone in his German high tech kayak"; Just to make it clear, I am making this up here...).

I have now idea what O Speck's political beliefs were and I don't want to make excuses for him, but you can be fairly sure that if he wanted support, he had to "play the game".


As to your other bit of info:
"Since he could not swim, he tied himself to his kayak"
Wow, I hope he did not have to rely on this system too often.
But what do I know, he made it all the way to Australia.

Cheers,

Viktor

Yes, Viktor, the pictures are terrible, I know!

Still, better something than nothing! Yes, the fact that he'd gone back to Germany sort of puts another slant on things ; it doesn't quite fit the story as it is presented in the NMM presentation??

But, never the less, it is a tremendous accomplishment whatever way you look at it. He must have been an amazing person with incredible determination.

As for the Pionier Flatboot Company, it would be very interesting to know more about it and how it got to 1971.

I'll contact a friend who has a connection with the ANMM to see if there's any information about the expedition by the four in the fifties, you never know. When I was taking the pictures on Saturday there were quite a few Europeans milling about the exhibition so who knows what information this exhibition is bringing to light, for the museum.

There were quite a number of elderly Dutch people there on Saturday and that may have been the presence of the Duyfken at the museum at present. I was tempted to go and take some pictures of the Duyfken then, but an enquiry at the counter revealed that the cost was $32! You had to pay to look on board all of the floating exhibits rather than just the Duyfken. Well, if you've already seen the other ships why would you pay to see them all yet again. Bad marketing, small pocket!

GregF

I don't know if this is related to either trip but a few years ago I saw this postcard on ebay and saved a copy to try and find more details but never found anything, does anyone know anything about it?