Kayak Bytes

A little late on this post, but here it is. 

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.

Had a great time as usual with Kurt and Anton, got to paddle in rain and wind.. Always fun! No lightning in it or we would have called it quits. On Saturday, I tried a roll, and it was one of those were EVERTHING went wrong. Oh well, that’s what practice is for. On Monday, Anton and I went out again and played around with half filled boats. Anton has pretty much got the self rescue down, he can get back in while in the deep. Gets a little water in the boat, but it is still quite manageable for him. He added more and more until he found out where the secondary stability went away. Nice thing to know.

Here’s a picture of Anton loading his Sea Tour on my element.

Tony

Went paddling on Saturday with Tony and Kurt and again Monday morning with Tony.

Aside from my legs falling asleep Saturday everything went well and we had a good time. Hopefully Kurt will post a short review of my Sea Tour ;). Many thanks to Kurt for the tips on bracing and preparing to roll.

I managed to get a few good pictures through the vinyl of a dry bag.

I learned a couple more things about my boat. The most important item to tackle now is a narrower coaming. It’s too easy to get unseated and pop the skirt off with the current setup. Second and nearly as important are some improvements to the seat to reduce the pressure points and keep my legs from falling asleep.

I’m stopping by Home Depot tonight for another LDPE tube and will get a bit more serious about using heat to make it hold it’s shape. I’m shooting for 18×28 inches this time.

Hello Everyone, 

After a lot of mucking around I finally got back to building. I have mounted the front and rear end pieces.

The rear was quite easy but the front took some thinking (that’s code for looking at how others do it).

I was lucky to have noticed the more steps required in the main backbone the harder it would be to make. I spent some time on the CAD positioning the backbone  so there was only one step required, the nose. But still retain a luft (I hope that’s the correct term) of nearly 100mm (4″) from end to end

 

For the rear piece I parted the backbone and made a joiner like a motise join. This proved to be quite easy.

For the front I needed to Brace and fillet a cross piece to get strength and rigidity.

 

 

I am now ready to purchase timber, I need to brace the ribs in place and then the fun begins, laying the strips down.

I have noticed that the sides are 150mm (6″) deep for the full length of the kayak, that means the sides will be eactly 6 strips deep. Whew just like I planned it.

BTW I am getting jealous every one posting messages about paddeling, hope to be there inabout 6 months.

 

MikeS

 

 

 

 

I went kayaking with Kurt Maurer yesterday, always a fun and learning experience.

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: Read the rest of this entry »

Finally finished up the rear rigging on the SeaTour. I’ve also got Pedro style carry handles fore and aft. That’s Hannah’s paddle tucked under the rigging. I may carry it along as a spare this weekend. My paddle (not pictured) is hanging from the rafters with a fresh coat of varnish on the blades.
I’ve also glued up a foam seat from a stack of exercise mats and covered it with some scrap packcloth. You can see it’s crudeness here.

After merciless prodding and cajoling from Kurt Maurer, I finally got more padding and a better seat in the Sea Ranger. Ya see, Kurt has very tender knees and other body parts so I had to put a little padding in to ease the pain. (I figured he would get calloused up a bit and it would be a non-issue… not the case.) Also in the works was extending the seat a bit for more support ahead of the sit bones. This latter mod was for me to keep my legs from going to sleep. I sanded down the front edge of the seat with my bench sander to make it square then used some contact adhesive to stick a ~6 inch extension on it. After that was stuck, I shaped it a bit. Things turned out pretty good. Kurt and I are tentatively scheduled to paddle again on Thursday so will see then if any more mods are needed. Here’s ya a picture of the seat, and as usual, you can click on it for more shots..

Tony Olsen