Mag

And, here is her site:

index to articles

Always good for a laugh or at least a shake of the head.

Tony

Bad news is now I need a way to transport the kayaks.. Good news is I bought a trailer..
More on that in the next post..

So, What have you all been up to??

Tony

I’ve been trying to get my roll down and to build a bit more confidence. While playing in the shallows, working on the hip snap, Kurt said “that hip snap was pretty weak” so I did another and promptly went all the way over. I guess that one was strong enough.. Now to find a happy middle ground.

After going to deeper water, I nailed 3 more rolls. On the last one, my paddle was not set for the sweep and I noticed it was starting to dive. I stopped the attempt and got the paddle in the right position and ended up with a very nice sweep, snap, layback and recovery.

Information I learned / had reinforced, was:

1) keep your head in the water as long as possible during the roll, it is the last thing out.

2) Hip snap, do it with a bit of conviction.

3) Make sure your set-up for the sweep is good *before* you start to sweep/roll up.

4) You have pleanty of time while inverted to do all this, take your time and get everything figured out. Same as: Dont rush the roll, you have a better chance of coming up if you take your time.

That’s about it for now, headed out to kayak with Anton tomorrow.

Tony

I saw quite a few kayak racks on the trip.  My old home town of about 5,000 had quite a few cars and trucks with racks on them and I saw a few SOT’s on some of those racks.  I haven’t seen many racks or kayaks here in St. Louis though.

A little more on the Sea Ranger stripper:  When I glassed the hull, I didn’t do any fill coats.  One reason was that I wanted to save a bit of weight and the other is that I wanted to see if it would slide through the water a bit easier as in ’shark skin’ hulled boats.  Not having anything to compare to, can’t really tell if the departure from laminar flow is helping any, but suspect it is.  When I taped the shear, I used a scraper to even it out and applied a very thin coat to get back to transparency.

That’s about all the news that isn’t from here, catch y’all later..

Tony

Post Tags:
Directly under each title is the text “Tagged as:”. Clicking on the keywords will take you to a list of similar articles. For example, clicking on SeaRanger will give you a quick list of articles about Tony’s strip built Sea Ranger.
Photos:
Just under the banner above is a Photos link. For the time being it will show Tony’s photo sets with Kayak in the title. I will soon make it so that other author’s photos can appear in the mix. This way you can check out the pictures without leaving the comfort of KayakBytes.

Feeds:
I’ve added a number of links to the right for adding the Kayak Bytes feed to your online feed reader.

Changing Banner:
The graphic in the header will rotate through a series of pictures that Tony or I have taken. If you have an interesting kayak picture that you woulad like us to add to the rotation post a link to it in the comments below. Please make sure that it’s suitable for cropping and resizing to 800×200 pixels.

New Hat:
You should notice the new hat pictured above. Can you belive that Tony actually bought a new hat? Say good bye to those rusty rivets and that salt stained brim. I think maybe he took Kurt’s advice and bought a hat that floats now that he’s got some mad rolling skills.

Haven’t got the pictures from today ‘developed’ yet, so here’s one from Friday.

Take care all..

Tony

• Anton: Texas Kayak Builders Bash 2006 [Flickr]
• Tony: Texas Kayak Builders bash 2005 [Flickr]
• John: Slideshow of Texas Kayak Builders Bash 2006 [Webshots]

Howie E and his wife Braith are down from New Jersey to attend the Texas Kayak builders bash. Howie built a very nice double and has it on the top of his suburban. Today Kurt Maurer , Howie, Braith, my wife Elaine, and I went to the bay side of the state park for a bit of kayaking. Great time paddling and good company. Next, we all head for the builders bash.

Just thought I would remind you that the Texas Kayak Builders Bash is coming up on the 29th of April.

I have contributed a very limited edition T-shirt, (only 2 made.)  As usual, you can click on the picture for a much larger look.

See ya there!!

Tony Olsen