Category: Revelation

Kayak Race: 24.60: No excuses, none needed!

After the race where my time sucked because of the broken skeg, and the race where my time sucked because I was in a strange boat, today I didn’t have any excuses – I was back in my own boat. And who needs excuses when you improve your previous best time by 48 seconds!

The rain ended minutes before the race – the thunderstorm had been so intense that they’d announced at work that people should not wade through puddles because the intense rainfall had blown the tops of manholes and you might fall in one.

The creek was running pretty fast, and the bay was calm and flat. For me, that was perfect. I really enjoyed the strategy of trying to read the river and find the quieter parts on the way upstream and the faster bits for the way downstream. I was a little scared of breaking my skeg so I pulled it up long before I got to the channel off the bay. And then I paddled inside the “scum line” – a line of duckweed that showed you where there was a little back-eddy for some of the upstream, then it was cutting inside corners and trying to stay as close to the inner bank as I could and still make a good paddle stroke. After the turn, I paddled downstream in the fastest part of the stream, usually the outside of corners.

What a great evening. Worth missing watching the best stage of the Tour de France for, which is high praise indeed.

Oshkosh checklist

Only one week to Oshkosh, and I’ve barely started getting ready. I think I need to write what I need so I can strike them out as they’re done.

  • Airplane booked
  • Charts ordered and arrived
  • GPS loaded with route and car charts
  • Tent
  • Sleeping bag
  • Thermarest pad
  • Camera and batteries
  • Camp stove
  • Camp chair
  • Cooler
  • Breakfasts
  • water bottles
  • diet coke
  • beer
  • cooking and eating utensils
  • warm weather clothes
  • cold weather clothes

You’ll note that I only plan to prepare breakfasts. OshawaPilot will verify that after a day of walking around Oshkosh I’m so wiped out that I’m useless for doing just about anything around the camp, so I’m planning to eat brats on the show site.

I’m also still having camera trouble – I bought a Minolta Maxuum 7D DSLR on eBay, but it was broken so I had to send it back, and I haven’t heard anything from them since.

Upgraded to 2.6

I upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.6. It was extremely painless – I didn’t even bother to deactivate my plugins. So far, it looks pretty much the same. I do like the new plugins page, though. One of these days I’d like to see if I can get the Gallery plugin working – I had it working for a while, but it broke after a couple of upgrades of both Gallery and WordPress.

Kayak Construction: Finishing the underside of the deck

Today the glass tape under the deck was dry, so I took the deck off the hull again. I cut two 9×23 pieces of fibreglas cloth. (The instructions said to use scrap cloth, but since the previous time I was using cloth it didn’t mention keeping the scraps, so I had to use “good” cloth.) These were used to reinforce the deck recess area behind the cockpit.
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