Day: September 4, 2009

First paddle in the Thunderbolt

I went out for a short paddle in the new (to me) boat. At first I tried to paddle it in the lake, which I’d chosen because if I had to swim, a nice beach with clean sand and a gentle slope was the way to go. But there were breaking waves there, and I got swamped a couple of times just trying to get into the boat. And as I paddled out into the waves, the waves would come into the cockpit. I hope this isn’t normal for this boat, otherwise I’m going to have to get a spray skirt for any sorts of waves. It’s also really hard to get all the water out of. It’s been suggested by a few people that I try to install some bulkheads or at the very least put in dry bags. The boat had these foam “beams” front and back to brace the top deck up, but they’ve come away from the boat, and the back deck oil-cans a bit when I’m trying to get in, so a bulkhead might be just what I need.

After a few minutes of trying to paddle in the surf, and a lot of swimming, I decided to try the other side, and paddle a bit in the bay. At first I couldn’t seem to steer anywhere, until I went back to shore and discovered that with the tiller bar centered the rudder was hard over to one side. Once I straightened that up, things got a lot better. At first, I had to (and this is absolutely true and no exaggeration) brace when I got hit by the wake from two passing swans, but after 10 minutes of paddling, I felt pretty comfortable in flat water in the boat. I had no trouble at all getting it up to 7 mph. I’m not sure if it’s any faster than my current boat, but you can feel the lightness and I suspect that it would be less fatiguing to paddle at that sort of speed than my Looksha. Unfortunately both the bow and the rudder are magnets for weeds, which is a problem in the bay.

I’m eager to get more experience in this boat and get comfortable in waves. I’d be tempted to try it on Tuesday’s team work out since we’re doing a time trial on the canal, but I think I need to concentrate on the Looksha since that’s what I’m going to paddle at Small Swells and Long Lake.

Now all I have to do is name it. I didn’t use the names much, but to me my Skerray was always “Mary Ellen Carter”, after the song by Stan Rogers, because it enabled me to “rise again”, and the Looksha was “Gideon Brown” after the song by Great Big Sea, because she can “punch ahead in any gale”. I’m thinking maybe “Anne-Marie” after the boat in Stan Rogers’ song “Acadian Saturday Night” because it has “wings on the water”.

New (to me) boat!

Thunderbolt next to LookshaLast night I picked up a new (to me) kayak, a gift from Scott Stenberg who has a large number of boats and was looking to get rid of a few. This one has been rode hard and put away wet over a long career with a couple of owners who are far more intense than I, but in spite of a number of nicks and bangs and customizations and re-customizations, the gel coat is still clear and unclouded by UV and it’s still pretty smooth under the waterline. Scott even included a cover to keep it that way. The boat is currently rigged with a rudder underneath, although it came with an over-stern rudder or two if I want to convert it. I have a suspicion that the underneath type is better in the surf, but the over-stern one is better in weeds. I’ll have to see. The boat is only 29 pounds – I’d never weighed my Looksha before, and was astonished to find it come in at 49.5! I’d always assumed it was lighter because it felt so much lighter than my Skerray. The Thunderbolt is also about half a foot longer and about 2 inches narrower. Dan described it as “tender”, which I think is a polite way to say “tippy as hell”.

One consequence of the underneath rudder is that I had to dig a hole in the lawn in order to sit in the boat to adjust the foot bar position. I guess I should mention that the first time I tried sitting in the boat on a flat lawn, I tipped over. That doesn’t bode well for my first experiences on the water, does it?

Inside the cockpit, showing the tiller barThe strange thing for me is the tiller steering. I’ve never really looked at one before, so I’m not sure how stock this one is. I know that Scott added the PVC pipe to extend the tiller bar because he couldn’t reach it the way he had the foot brace. Interestingly, even though he’s shorter than I, I actually had to pull the foot brace towards the cockpit a few stops to get enough push to get some rotation. I’m going to order a set of “normal” foot pedals from Onno Paddles just as soon as I figure out which of those things he needs the dimensions for.

Widget helps outI tried to enlist Widget’s help while I was adjusting things on the boat, but he was no help at all. In this shot, you can see the “cargo net” behind the cockpit for keeping PFD or extra hydration, and in front of the cockpit you can see that red tapey thing which I’m not sure is some sort of carrying handle or to attach the GPS to. There are also patches of velcro here and there that I’m sure had a specific use for one of the owners. One of the strangest things is a couple of wide velcro straps across the cockpit – you can see the screws they attach to just to the left of Widget’s giant head. Scott said they were thigh straps, but I can’t see how you’d use thigh straps and get a good racing rotation, so maybe he or a previous owner paddled more like a sea kayaker than a racer? I will probably remove them and patch the holes with some epoxy and Fiberglas.

Once it warms up a bit today, I hope to get out to try to paddle this thing. Obviously I’m going to need to bring a change of clothes and a towel because there is no way I’m going to avoid dumping. I guess I’ll go to the beach where the bottom is sandy and not too unpleasant to swim in. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Palm Pre as car entertainment/navigation system

Tonight, I was driving down to a person’s house near Moravia, NY to pick up a used kayak. I’d never been there, so I decided to borrow Vicki’s car charger and see how the Pre’s “Sprint Navigation” works on a real test. And because my car has an “Aux in”, I decided to use the Pre to play music at the same time.

If I’d stopped to write this review about 1 mile before I got to my destination, it would have been pretty glowing. On the way down there, I loved the fact that it would fade out the music when it had to give me a direction – I could listen to my music as loud as I wanted and not miss a turn. It took a different route than Google Maps had given me, but it avoided some messing around in downtown Auburn, and I got a nice view of Skaneateles Lake. But it was slightly annoying that it preferred the local road names over the highway number, so while cruising along SR 5/20, it kept telling me “In 1.9 miles, continue along Clark Street Road” and the like as the road changed name every few minutes. On the other hand, the voice prompts were so clear and frequent that I could just go by the sound and not look at the map. On the gripping hand, the phone got uncomfortably hot.

But I was cruising down State Route 38A when it started counting down to a turn. Now, I’m pretty sure it was telling me it was Pine Hill Road, although when I try it now it says Decker Hill Rd. I couldn’t for the life of me see this road when it said to turn, although looking at Google Maps there is a Decker Hill Road around where I was at that time, although I think I might have been at the driveway south of Decker Hill Road. Whatever, I couldn’t see anything I’d want to turn onto, but the GPS stopped showing the road I was on, only the one it thought was there and that I should have turned on. And so the GPS said that it was recalculating. And it said it again. And again. At this point I figured it couldn’t recalculate because of the lack of cell phone coverage down there, so I quickly punched the address into my car’s Garmin Nuvi and it got me to my destination.

On the way home, after I stopped for gas, I decided to try the Pre again, but I was mostly using the Nuvi. When I first fired up the GPS on the Pre, it told me that my ETA was 9:20, but the Nuvi was saying 9:13. As I got closer to home, the Pre kept adjusting my ETA downwards until it eventually agreed with the Nuvi at 9:13, and I got home pretty close to that. I don’t know why the difference – maybe the Pre thinks people drive the speed limit or something crazy like that. Another slight annoyance was that unlike the Nuvi, the Pre’s GPS doesn’t have a “night mode” map with a darker colour scheme to preserve night vision. So I left the screen off 90% of the time. As a side benefit, the phone didn’t get as hot with the screen off.

As I got close to home, I had my second major disappointment of the night. Every GPS in the world (and Google Maps) thinks I should exit from I-590 north of home and come back south, but I prefer to exit to the south and continue north on our neighbourhood streets. And so when I leave I-590, the Nuvi says “Recalculating” once while I’m on the off-ramp as it tries to convince me to take the on-ramp back onto I-590, then “Recalculating” again after I turn onto the road and shows me the neighbourhood route that I normally take. The Pre didn’t handle it quite as well. As I left I-590, it said “Recalculating”, but didn’t actually manage to recalculate a route. It didn’t even show me the street map – all it showed me was a very thin red line pointing in an exact straight line back to the nearest segment of the original route, which for most of the route would have involved smashing through somebody’s house, then their back fence, and then hopping over an embankment onto I-590. And this time I couldn’t even blame poor cell phone coverage, as it was showing a strong signal and EVDO data coverage.

My final verdict on the Pre as a GPS navigator? I’d say about 8/10 when you’re on the proper route, but 0/10 if you accidentally get off the route it originally calculated for you. I suspect based on my experience with other GPSes that it might be better when you get off route to tell it to stop navigating, and then tell it calculate a new route from where you are to your destination. I don’t know why, but I’ve gotten better routes that way from Garmin GPSes than by allowing them to recalculate and it might be the same for the Pre. Or maybe Sprint/TeleNav will just fix the damn software.