Author: Paul Tomblin

Kayak Construction: Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck

Today I did the part I’ve been dreading, glassing the inside of the hull. And for all the dread and worry, it ended up being about 18 times worse than my worst fears. The glass ended up bumpy and full of bubbles. It also went majorly wrong in the ends, where the glass cloth ended up bunched up and impossible to epoxy down. Fortunately the end parts are going to be filled with epoxy, so that’s not so bad. And most of the big bubbles are going to be in parts of the boat that nobody will see, but some of them are in the cockpit where I’ll see it every time I sit down.

I’m hoping and praying that I’ll be able to cut down and fill some of the worst of the bubbles.

LazyWeb: Eclipse files with .loading extensions?

Update: It’s not Eclipse, it’s NFS. The file is there as [classname].java on the machine that has ClearCase installed, but on the one I’m running on, it’s [classname].java.loading.

Google isn’t helping me here.

I have a bunch of errors in my Eclipse project, because it’s staying it can’t find a particular class. I do an “ls”, and the .java file is there. But in Eclipse, the file appears as [classname].java.loading, and no amount of hitting F5 will convince it to rescan the directory and rediscover the file.

Help?

Kayak Racing: 22.87 – I’m in love

Sorry, Vicki, I didn’t know how to break this to you, but I’ve fallen in love. One of the racing team members, Frank, is selling his old Necky Looksha II kayak. It’s 20 feet long, 20 inches wide, weighs about 45 pounds, and as the time above shows, fast as hell, and beautiful.

Considering how much of the time I was worrying about tipping over rather than concentrating on my stroke, the fact that I was 1.26 minutes (76 seconds) faster than last week shows just how fast this kayak is. My split after the bay portion of the race was only 21 seconds faster than last week, which shows that not only was I wasting more time adjusting to the new boat out there, but also the lighter boat allowed me to keep more energy for the second half. This the first time I haven’t had to stop for a drink of water during the race. And obviously, after I learn to paddle it without worry, I’ll get even faster.

So here’s my plan:

  1. Finish the Pygmy Boat kit this fall. Try it out a bit and see how I like it.
  2. Next spring, sell either the Pygmy Boat or the Skerray.
  3. If Frank still hasn’t sold his Looksha by then, buy it. Otherwise look for something equally fast and challenging.
  4. Profit?