Chapter 216: Day 215

Day 215,

Melaina stopped by the archive today with the completed umbrella prototype.  She said that she’d tried to shave off a little bit of the weight from last time, but warned me that the addition of the canvas was more than making up for it.  True to her warning, I had just about as much trouble with it as last time.  Maybe slightly easier for me to lift and carry, but that might have just been wishful thinking on my part.

Still I was pretty excited and happy with it.  Hopefully a visit to that healing spring will help.  I said as much to Melaina and we got to talking about that upcoming endeavor.  Maybe that was a mistake, but I didn’t mention Iole at all.  Although I did bring up the prospect of building a whole new boat for future endeavors so that I’m not taking from the fishers whenever I want to go out and explore.

Melaina told me that while she normally does the cutting of the planks, the actual design and assembly of boats is handled among the fishers.  To my surprise the Village doesn’t have a dedicated boat builder; rather, the maintenance and construction of their boats is a matter of shared knowledge and expertise with the fishers.  It seems the construction of new boats is a rare enough thing that there’s no need for someone who just does that.  Everyone takes care of their own while assisting their peers.  Meanwhile, the requests and organization of getting new materials all goes through the mediators.

That’s a rough summary of what Melaina explained to me anyway.  There’s more detail that I’m leaving out, but the gist of it is that making a boat is a more complex process than I assumed and just because they’re made of wood that doesn’t mean it’s solely the Village carpenter’s job.

More food for thought and things to maybe look into in the future.  Or I could ask Maiko to show me how she made hers and do it myself?  She has more of a dugout design going so maybe that’d be simpler and avoid going through - and I never thought I’d use this term here - Village bureaucracy.  I’ll bring it up with her this evening.

Oh, and while I’m on the topic of things I’ve been meaning to do, I still need to track down the glassmaker and talk about microscopes.  Maybe I’ll do that on my next “day off.”  The weather’s nice enough for a walk to the west-side of the outskirts, although he (or was it she?) is on basically the exact opposite side of the circuit from me.  I think Tristan might be in that same general area though too?  Might be worth checking into while I’m out there.

 

I talked to Maiko about boat building.  I made it clear that I wasn’t asking her to build one for me, but to teach me how to do it herself.

She seemed amenable to the idea, but cautioned me that she didn’t entirely build her boat herself.  It’s her mother’s handiwork, although she was there for the whole process and helped with it, so she has at least a general idea of what to do.

At any rate, this could be a fun project to work on once we get back.  And it could be useful to keep in reserve if Theo starts trying to make things difficult like Pat warned us about.

 

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