The Viking Longboat Plan
I have a healthy fixation with the words and phrases internet denizens have used to find this outlet of philosophy. And why not? After all, every other site operator out there probably trawls through their referals and says “grilled mackeral, what the hell?” dismissing it as a fluke, a distraction, a quirk of the ether. These people are fools, they do not realise that this search did not happen without cause, that the result was stumbled on without the searcher wanting to find the answer, so, whether the search be mispelled as with our good friend Mr Mackeral, nonsensical or just plain weird, I’ll happily fulfill any requests that come in.
To that end I was, once again (and I realise I only wrote about this yesterday), checking the referrals for something new. Lo and behold, the viking longboat, mentioned once by Ms Hammerlow in comments has been struck three whole times. So I should bring you up to speed on the whole scheme, for it is a worthy one.
Thinking about it now, I may have already done this but you know me well enough to realise that I’m not going to check and just chunter on regardless. I digress…
Living on the coast, as I do sometimes, and having both a father and brother with heavy nautical tendancies I have often been struck by the absence of sea-going in my life. Frequently I have debated which manner of water vessel would work best and I have had various musings about different boats. A speed boat of some description with high noise to power ratio (ie slow but sounding like the world’s ending) would be in-keeping with my other favoured form of transport, and would hack my dad off no end. The appeal there, quite obvious. But really, not for me.
I have debated my bro’s preferred means of watery activity – sailboards, catamarans, that kind of gig. But he always seems to be breaking his shit, and it’s his thing so I wouldn’t want to appear to be jumping on a bandwagon.
Eventually, over time, I reached the right answer. A good answer, one which is both creative and flamboyant, much like myself. One which would attract similarly creative and flamboyant men, for the ocean is a man’s dominion, ideally with beards and a taste for beer; yes friends, a viking longboat was deemed the right idea.
After some hours persuing the internet I worked out that nobody actually sells viking longboats ready constructed, “just plug in a few vikings and go pillage” style. This meant that for my plan to succeed I’d have to build one.
A major stumbling block for two basic reasons : 1 – I’m crap at building anything that involves manual labour. 2 – it takes longer than my attention span will hold.
Both of these flaws are effectively dealbreakers given that, in the unlikely event I actually started the project, if I did get as far as taking saw to wood the whole thing would fall apart and sink. Or I’d sink, but various pieces of wood (sometimes referred to as “wreckage”) would float.
At the time, however, and this is typical of such schemes, I was unaware of these hinderances. They were either non existant or, more likely, I had talked them into a corner with some cunning inner dialogue.
I therefore reasoned that in order to construct a full size (or as near a damnit) viking longboat I’d need some plans, a blueprint, a set of instructions, that kind of thing. After further hunting on the internet I discovered, again to my surprise, that nobody sold full size viking longboat kits either. I’ll pause here just to highlight that this is a major online shopping niche ready to be filled! There must be almost several people with credit cards just waiting to buy plans for their own viking longboat, just like me.
Anyway, I did come up with a cunning alternative to this shortcoming in the design process. I’d buy a model viking longboat, which are available, and use it as a trial run before scaling everything up accordingly and doing the real thing. Awe inspiring!
This is the kind of Dunkirk spirit that made Britain great! Adapt! Overcome! Buy the kit then leave it in a cupboard for a year gathering dust!
That, friends, is the viking longboat scheme and just so you know, once a plan is made is stays filed until such a time that it can be thrust into action. So there will be a viking longboat constructed by myself and those who want in. And we will set sail for parts unknown and doubtless, a watery grave.
Related posts:
