Very nice kayaking diary from Spain! Non Spanish speakers don’t fret, there is a translate flag for you to click on to get it in English. The stories loose a bit in the English translation, but the general thoughts can be understood.
On this site are a tons of very nice pictures and trip reports. Sure is making me want to head back to Spain! Check it out by clicking this link: diario de kayak.
Tony
A little late on this post, but here it is.Â
We had a good time, me; 1 redfish and 1 trout. Jim; 2 trout. This was good enough to keep us in first place for quite a while but some harder core guys came in later and bumped us down to 4th. Had a good day, and will do things a bit different next year.
Since then, I’ve taken on a contract job at South Texas Project. A dual PWR (Westinghouse) plant that is going into a re-fueling outage. Good for a bit of money for more epoxy and glass for the next boat :) The instrumentation department calls me back every outage.
Since starting this job, I’ll be a bit busy for the next 5 weeks. Down side is no kayaking 
Take care all.
Tony
Just loaded all my gear and will be fishing tomorrow. A big boat and kayak tournament. Good buddy Jim talked me into it, so will be paddling and fishing the canals at 5 am tomorrow. After first light, we will go out into West Galveston bay off of Tiki Island. Should find a few honey holes, will probably fish near North Deer Island as well.
I’ll let ya’ll know how we did.
Tony
Now that I’ve paddled my boat a number of times and have started getting comfortable with it there are some things that will be changed for the next one.
Cockpit - If I build another Sea Tour I’ll be sure to move the 3rd frame forward a couple inches and move the 4th frame (masik) back behind my knees. I went with Tom’s frame placement and need to mix it up a little to compensate for my long legs. To fix it in this version I’m going to strip the skin from the cockpit and peg a curved masik behind my knees. This will make it a little more difficult to enter the boat but should keep me from falling out.
Coaming - I tried something new, using LDPE tubing to make a free standing coaming, similar to Tom’s aluminum version. Over all it works well but it’s too wide and keeps trying to return to an oval (wider) shape. I’m experimenting with the same tubing now and lots more heat. It melts nicely and doesn’t burn readily so a torch isn’t out of the question. I was using an open flame on my camp stove to heat it up. The extra heat seems to set a permanent bend in it. I’ll stress the bends later to see if they lost any flexibility or strength.
Rocker - In my opinion this boat is very hard to turn. I ended up with a litle less rocker than Tom’s offsets called for. I’ll take a plane to the keel to add a little rocker and then use some heat to coax some more shape into the keel. I suspect if I’d used WRC instead of Yellow Pine for the keel it’d flex more.
Back Deck - I love the low back deck, but I’ve already cracked one of the stringers (I used 3) just behind the cockpit. When I rework the cockpit I’ll see if I can’t reach it to make some sort of repair. On the next boat I might put some thin ply or an extra deck beam to support the stringer.
That’s about it for now. I’m sure I’ll ramble on more as I get more experience paddling.
My camera took a coffee bath when I got rear-ended on the way to work last week so I don’t have any pictures. Hopefully the other driver’s insurance will come through with enough cash to get a nicer one.
We hit the lake early yesterday morning to beat the rush (which never really happened). A few friends from church joined us and we swam and paddled our way through a restful day.
Bill and two of his sons took the kayaks out and had a fun time. I think he might have been bitten by the bug and may soon experience the challenges of building a kayak and keeping the wife happy.
Bill did very well paddling my kayak and didn’t dump it once. His son, Hayden, took to it like most kids and was quickly pushing his mother’s comfort zone. He dumped Hannah’s kayak a few times but managed to self rescue and paddle back to shore. He also took mine out and while he liked the stability, he thought it was too hard to turn.
I practiced carving a turn for a while and managed to sit on an edge long enough to bring the bow around a little. I’m getting a much better feel for the edge of stabilty and only pushed it too far once. I also practiced self rescue using the paddle as an outrigger. I managed to wet exit and get back in the boat in water over my head. By the time the spray skirt was back in place there was about 3-4″ of water in the boat and it was a real challenge to remain upright. A bilge pump would have been handy and the paddle should provide enough stability to use it.