Today I finished wiring the rear deck panels, attached the deck recess plate, and positioned and taped the deck down on the hull, and tightened all the wires. I was going to start gluing the deck seams, but a thunderstorm started as soon as I was about to start mixing the epoxy so I called it a day.
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Category: Kayaking
Kayak Construction: finally some high res pictures
Haven’t been out to work on the kayak today, but now that Vicki is home I can finally take some high resolution pictures of the kayak. This one shows the deck panels up on top of the hull (although they’re just lightly wired and not connected to the hull in any way).
Another view. Note the wires sticking up.
Kayak Construction: Starting the top deck
Oh, two posts in one day! After the epoxy had dried a bit I went to scrape off the excess and I realized it was actually dry enough that I could work with it if I were careful. So I started wiring the deck. And it went pretty well. It was great to see that the lessons I learned from the hull are making the deck work much better. I got the front panels (panel #4) wired together, the shear panels (panel #3) drilled and wired to the front panels, and started on the rear panels as well. Everything is wired very loosely so that I can make adjustments afterwards.
It looks great, and I can really start to see the beautiful lines of the kayak for the first time. It looks exactly as I hoped, a hard chined British-style.
And once again, I am reminded that no matter how tempting it is, you should not put the portable drill down on the battery pack as shown in every catalog picture you’ve ever seen. I’ve now knocked over the drill again and broken a third 1/16th inch drill bit. I’m trying very hard to put the drill down on its side, in the hopes that my last 1/16th inch drill bit will last until the end of this project.
Kayak Construction: Flipping the hull
Today I start on the deck. First task is to glue the back of the cockpit together. That took about 30 seconds. But since once that’s done, the next step is to start putting assembling the deck on the boat. So I took the time to remove the two seven inch high pieces that were screwed onto the temporary frames when I first turned the hull upside down to work on the outside.
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Third Race: 25.62. Still sucking
I tried to pace myself better today, but it didn’t work. I ended up actually being 0.29 minutes (17.4 seconds) slower. I was attempting to go slower on the way out into the bay, but the wind was coming behind from behind, and there were swells coming from three different directions, and it threw me off. Especially since it meant that I had a wind in my face on the way back in, and also on the upstream paddle on the river. I was still tired at the split (and Ken still managed to not record it) in spite my attempt to go slower at first. I’ve got to figure out how to pace better!
There were a lot of people there tonight, both racers and not racers, and there was a lot of traffic on the river. There were a bunch of Huggers Club members, and suddenly I’m not the fastest one, which is mildly disappointing, but good to see the club embracing this activity. There were also some real racers – one guy who is nearly national team level, and he did the race twice in around 14.60. I’m going to see if I can convince him to tow me next time, strictly so he can get a better work out, you know.
There is a guy at the races who I think is a co owner of Bay Creek – the first time I met him was when he came to the Huggers club meeting where we discussed the Paddle Power group. He’s very outgoing – almost to the point of obnoxiousness, but it works for him. Anyway, he invited me for their Monday night training group – he says he’ll be able to teach me some better paddling techniques and some tips on training. Maybe I’ll learn how to paddle so my elbows don’t hurt so much.