Kayak Bytes: Just another LR2 Blogs weblog

Not Kayaking, but pretty cool.

Suppose you are in a lecture at a kayak symposium and they are using a whiteboard to list some things.  You would like copies but there are none left.  What to do?  Grab your camera (or cellphone camera) and snap a picture of it (take more than one if the picture is large.)  Next, email it or upload it with a google widget to ScanR and they will email you back a copy of the board.  There are 3 features, Whiteboard, Documents, Business cards.

Later..

Tony

Kayak Paddle Tales

New site, Florida Kayaker and wildlife photographer. Here’s a link to the blog:
http://paddletales.blogspot.com/

Many nice shots of birds of the gulf coast. Here’s some of mine if ya wanna look.

http://flickr.com/photos/tonyolsen/collections/72157600004887151/

Take care all.. Safe paddling

Tony

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Paddling in Spain

Carlos of Diario de kayak sent me a couple of links on kayaking in the Mediterranean. The link to the pictures is here. Also included is a link to a video taken from a kayak, with the camera under the water link: Bajo de Agua

Thanks Carlos

Tony

Kayak rolling

Here’s a guy that can really roll a SOF kayak. Interesting viewpoint, the camera is mounted on the bow.

click here for Youtube video

Another bunch of Greenland style rolls here.

Enjoy!

Tony

Scubascapie’s Strip Built Sled

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Scubascapie’s Kayak project, :: wood carvings, Native American Flutes and other stuff.

Very cool looking sled with a strip built seat.  Hopefully we won’t need anything like this down here in Texas.

diario de kayak (A kayaking Diary)

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

Fishing tournament follow up

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

Fishing Tomorrow

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

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Thoughts of My Sea Tour 17R

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.