My Weekend

No it wasn't spent paddling this, but it's quite interesting isn't it, Napali, a transparant folding skin-on-frame.

I started the weekend with my regular Friday night paddle. While driving the 20 minutes to the lake, I'd mentally prepared for the probability that I'd likely be paddling alone on this cold dark night. But once at the boat ramp, there was Joan and Lyman taking their kayaks off their cars. Joan had just gotten her new beautiful Lumpy Greenland paddle.

My old paddling friend Eric was also there waiting for me. We had prearranged a hook up so I could lend him my Garmin Forerunner, and return a white water paddle I had borrowed from him. He's not had much time for paddling these days, Zane is only 2 yrs old. His free time has been spent mountain biking, and he's starting to train for some 100hr ultra MTB races, wanting to try out the forerunner before buying his own.

On the water, Joan commented first on the temperature drop, I too felt it at our turn around. During the paddle we were toasty warm, but after finishing the 12 miles, and getting out of the boats, our hands and fingers started freezing and hurting. Stowing gear and strapping boats down with frozen hands is the hardest part of these night paddles. I often leave the car running, and get in for a quick thaw in order to finish the task. It's still so worth it. No clouds out, the moon hadn't set, and the stars were brilliant. I got back home around 11:30PM, the temperature was 32 F, so not too bad.

Saturday was spent on chores, and watching the sailboat building. Lots of progress being made on the boat this weekend, of course Paul and Alan work on it till 2 and 3am most weekend nights (training). Alan hopes to turn it over in a couple weeks to fiberglass the hull.

Then this afternoon, I hosted a skin-on-frame kayak building meeting, with a small group from my larger local Kayak Meetup group. I can't believe I forgot to get the camera out. There were eight of us at this 1st meeting. Since Paul and I both have in-progress SOFs (Paul has the deck finished and needs to make ribs next), and I have quite a library of SOF building books, it made sense to meet here.

We have a great group started, with each bringing some experience and variety to the group, whole, including 4 with previous kayak building experience (mostly wooden), and one with CAD software who is designing his own SOF. Very informative, and fun and social. Probably one of the most interesting things is that the members of this group are interested in building different types of SOFs, from SOFs traditionally built and with willow stemmed ribs, a rolling Greenland, and a double SOF. It will really be interesting seeing the kayaks that come out of this.

We'll likely start another "private" Meetup, devoted to local kayak builders, a place to easily share links, photos, progress reports, stories. I'm hoping this group will keep me motivated to get mine done quickly. Especially since I've already found my next one, a Yostworks folding SOF. Something I can take on the sailboat :)

As far as my training over the past week. My goal is 2 times everything each week, this will keep me in maintenance for triathlon, and along with my paddling will be great cross training for WaterTribe. I ran*2, swam*2, yoga*1, bike*0, wt train*0. Oops, not great, but not totally sedentary.