Corrugated Viking Ship

Every year the John Michael Kohler Arts Center holds a corrugated boat race where the Sheboygan River meets Lake Michigan. The race is on the 4th of July, which is a bit difficult because we've typically used that weekend to visit family or friends. But we've seen the race and it's loads of fun. This year we are staying home and we are going to participate in the race.

We're building a corrugated viking ship for the Patient Advisory Committee at the cancer clinic. Today Jim's oncologist Max, a friend and breast cancer survivor Vicki, and I all got together to start working on our corrugated boat. Last year we wanted to build one but we got the idea together too late. This year we're planning ahead. We made a model of our boat today.

Max is into sailing so he had some really neat ideas for a boat. He'd thought out a model in his head. By the time we arrived at his house he'd already cut out some of the basic shapes and coated them with a resin that we are hoping will make the ship waterproof. When we got there, we had a bunch of flat pieces of corrugated that didn't look like anything much. We got going on our ship, and Max's vision came to life.

As we applied enough hot glue to make a house, glued on strips of corrugated and reworked the corrugated to bend a bit, I thought of Jim. Of course if Jim were here we'd win hands down. We'd win for speed, but we'd also win for the sheer look of the boat. From a distance our Viking ship will look totally awesome. Get a little closer and you're going to realize that our ship is made by a group of amateurs. Jim would have had a sleek design with absolutely no glue showing. He would have folded edges and made the ship so water tight we could row across Lake Michigan.

Sometimes I am a slow worker . Put me in front of a computer and I can hammer something out in no time. Hand me a box cutter and ask me to cut a straight line? That's going to take me a while. I could just feel Jim hovering. "You know, Kate, if you just folded that in half and then cut it wouldn't take as long..." and "Can I help you with that?" - that was code for "I'm ready to take over this project now." I could feel the frustration mounting in his chest as I s.l.o.w.l.y. cut lines, used the glue gun and used the clamps to keep the strips on the ship. (I should mention that Vicki and Max work much faster than me - they could have put out the boat in less time without me there, but at least I took a number of pictures!) I could feel him right behind me, eyes boring into my back. It's sort of the same control feeling I have watching my kids work with clay or try and paint something. It takes all of my strength to keep my hands off their projects or suggest "improvements". I knew if he was here, the boat would be magnificent. And he would have pretty much singlehandedly finished it because he knew his work would be faster and more exact.

Today's ship was just a model. But the model looked so amazing. It went from flat corrugated to a real ship. The final product is going to end up around 16 feet long. I hope we represent the Vince and the PAC well. I hope our finished product, although made by amateurs, will float and represent Jim well. I hope he knows I'm excited about this project because of him. Anytime I touch corrugated I think of Jim. It's impossible not to. But today I felt him there with us. Not just his frustration, but also excitement. The corrugated boat race isn't for months to come. But today I got the feeling that he'd be with us every step of the way.