thehostelwitness

The Maiden voyage - kayaking Ross Lake

Kayak finally done, I took her out for a 3 day paddle up at Ross Lake in the North Cascades a couple weekends ago and couldn't have asked for a better trip. A better planned trip, yes.

Finished!

avast! My Pygmy Coho Kayak is nearly ready!

The last two weeks on the boat have been pretty busy, with Werner having added the hatches. After adding protective coats of fiberglass and epoxy to the hatches, we were now down the home stretch!

We added the seats and we were able to take the boat out on the water for the first time!

Building a kayak: Days and Days later

So my initial guess at the amount of time it would take to build a kayak? 40 hours.

The truth? Well, we're still at it. Or at least, my dad is. With work calling and weekends sparse, my trips are limited to hours at a time. Still, the progress has been something to behold.

Werner is doing me a great favor by working on this boat, yes.

Building a Kayak: Days 9-10

Now that my vacation is over, the kayak building is being reserved to a weekend activity. But having nearly reached the halfway mark, its nice to see that this is going to work out as planned! 

 

The last work done to the kayak consisted of stitching the hull panels together with wire. Now that the hull was fully wired into place, it was time to glue the seams together.

Building a Kayak - Day 6

Now we are cooking!

With the panels finally glued, we can get to the boat building.

Today was our longest day - we started right at 8am

Building a Kayak - Days 2 - 5

It turns out, building a kayak consists of a lot of glueing and waiting. Days 2 - 5 were spent glueing the panels together, using a special epoxy coating a strip of fiberglass. What took us 3 hours to prepare and glue on the second day was whittled

Building a Kayak - Day 1

As I mentioned earlier, I went to Pygmy Kayaks in Port Townsend last weekend and purchased a sea kayak kit. I first saw these boats on the documentary, Paddle To Seattle, and pretty much decided on a whim that this was going to be my spring project - done running with the marathons and its a bit too snowy for a hike, so this is going to be perfect. 

I'm not going to lie, an added bonus is spending a week building this thing with my step dad. I daresay that he's more excited than I am about the whole project; he's the brains and I'm the assistant behind this thing. 

Day 1 -