Category: Activities

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.

Kayak Construction: Saturation coat

I’ve spent the time since the last time I blogged about my kayak project working on epoxying the seams, and trying to round them. This involved a lot of messing about with files, sanding sponges, and the palm sander, and syringes full of epoxy thickened with wood “flour”. Yesterday I declared “good enough”. It’s not perfect, but I think that after putting more layers on it will be fine.
Continue reading “Kayak Construction: Saturation coat”

Second race: 25.33. I suck a little less

Well, I paced myself a tiny bit better, and it wasn’t as windy and wavy out on the bay. So I managed to shave some time off. I’m not 100% sure exactly how much, because I think the time I was given last time was minutes and seconds because they were hand timing, but this time their computer worked and the times are in minutes and hundredths of seconds.

My friend Rob and two other members of the Huggers club showed up, and it was nice to have people in the same circumstance as me to talk to. Plus the real racers recognized me and were more friendly towards me this time.

I tried hard to pace myself, but as usual when I head into wind and waves I start paddling as fast as I can. I actually caught the guy who started ahead of me at the turn around, the older retired gentleman in the impossibly light open canoe I mentioned last week. But he pulled away steadily on the downwind leg and continued to pull away on the flat. He finished in 23.80. They didn’t get my split time, so I can’t tell exactly how much slower I was on the second half. That’s too bad because a split time would be good to show me how much better I’m getting at pacing.

Unfortunately this time I didn’t even win the “big heavy bald guy” category, because there was a real racer in a kevlar kayak who was about the same size as I’d be if I lost my beer gut, and somehow his 30 pound wisp of a kayak counted in the “touring kayak” class. He did it in 18.68. He even beat all but one of the people in the unlimited kayak class. But because he was a big heavy bald guy, I found it easy to find an excuse to strike up a conversation with him and that got me talking to more racers, and I could ask some technical questions.

Great fun. I just hope my elbow pain can stay at a low enough level that I can continue to race.

And the suckage continues

As predicted in Rants and Revelations » I have seen the future, and it sucks, they’ve hired a new Flash guy to write the new user interface. It really sucks to find out that your contributions are going to be even more marginalized just as you’re also finding out that they want you to become a full time employee at a significant pay cut.

I guess it’s time to stop antagonizing recruiters and start finding out seriously what’s out there. Either that or find out if the bank account would survive me taking off however long it would take me to get a masters in user inferace design.

Update: Oh, it gets better. New Guy has never even heard of source code control. In other words, he’s used to toy projects on toy operating systems.