Category: Kayaking

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.

Meta: New blog category

I added a new category to the blog, “Kayak Construction” and moved all my construction project postings to that category. Mostly that’s for my own benefit, so I can find them again if I need to. But like all WordPress blogs, each category has it’s own RSS feed so if you want, you can just subscribe to those posts if you really want to. (The only time I used that separate feed capability is when LUGOR set up a “Planet” feed of LUGOR members blogs, and I just gave them the URL for the feed for the “Geekery” category.)

Kayak Construction: Paul reads the instructions

Remember how yesterday I expressed surprise that after coating the cloth, it was textured rather than smooth? Well, I guess I should have done a bit better job of reading ahead in the instructions. I mentioned that today I was going to put on the keel reinforcement “tape”. Well, it turns out that you roller on a “fill coat” of epoxy over the whole hull, and then put the tape on and stick it down with more epoxy. And then when that all dries (tomorrow, it appears), you do another fill coat. So I guess it ends up smooth after all.

The instructions just say to

roll on a coat of epoxy over the entire hull to fill the weave of the cloth. (Do not squeegee fill coats.)

but when I do that, I ended up with bubbles and foam, so I went over the coat with a paint brush to smooth it out. Once again, I wish the instructions had mentioned things like this.

Then I put on the keel tape, and wet it down and stuck it down with the paint brush. That went relatively straight forwardly.

Then I went around the boat again with the paint brush and painted out bubbles and drips from the keel tape. Until I find my real camera, there is no way you could see any difference between today and yesterday with the cell phone camera, so I didn’t bother.

Tomorrow I do another fill coat. Then it’s time to start the deck panels. And maybe I’ll have a few days without sticky hands.