Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Back on the Water with my GP

I'm finally back on the water, after having recovered from a horrible cold. A couple weeks ago I attended a Greenland Rolling class offered by Sherri Perry and Turner Wilson hosted at Barrier Island Kayaks in Swansboro. It was great fun, a class I highly recommend. Using their "teaching boats", skin-on-frame or modified lower volume Betsy Bay kayaks, all were rolling and bracing, including first timers.





I

I've been a committed GP paddler for many years now, in fact it's the only seakayaking paddle I own. I even use it for longboat surfing in my NDK Explorer. During the WaterTribe Ultimate Challenge, I primarily used a single blade paddle for the dryness, but, I did also use a GP that my husband Paul made for me specifically to use with the wider Kruger Dreamcatcher.

Quite a few years ago I even started to build a skin-on-frame kayak. It's actually almost completed, but, I wasn't happy with the tightness of the skin application, and had planned to re-skin it. Turner convinced me to finish it out, and get over trying to make it perfect. Hopefully I'll have it on the water soon. Photos: frame completed, and testing out frame with saran wrap cover. See Fred Brown's Qajaq Page for more photos and story of kayak building.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your kayak frame looks pretty sweet there Dawn. We all need to get together somewhere soon and practice some of this stuff.

Thomas