Just like Kurt!!

Posted by Jay E. Morris on Jun 24, 2005

Yep. I follow the wondrous one's philosophy: get that sucker in the water!

Yep. Finishing touches can come later! Get that baby wet!

June 4th, ordered Chesie 17 plans. June 14th, ordered epoxy from Raka. June 18th, picked up plywood in Houston. June 11th, put it in the water for the first time.

Wait a minute......oh, yeah...I forgot to mention, the first three dates were 04. OK, I follow the master's philosophy, I'm just a lot slower than the master. Actually things were going real well the first couple weeks, spending 2-3 hours almost every night, moving right along.

And then me and my radial arm saw had a little argument. Which I lost. Luckily it didn't actually involve losing any parts. My hand surgeon says I'm the luckiest man he ever met. Missed muscle, nerves, tendons, all the good stuff. And now I have this really neat scar that goes from the web, around my index finger knuckle, and across my index finger. It can be a real conversation starter.

Or stopper.

But I digress. After I get the OK to continue work, life proceeded to do it's best to get into the way. Not to mention several dumb-a** mistakes, a couple of which I posted here. Putting signs on the kayak labeled "BOW" and "STERN" seemed to help. So a little work here and a little work there and after awhile, heck, you got a kayak.

So June 11th I took it up to Inks Lake State Park. Yep, missed the Texas wooden boat builders shindig by about a month. Unfortunately I was already committed that weekend. But I was able to escape and finished up the kayak to the point where I could put it in the water. No back band or foot braces* but I paddled. And it only dumped me once. I got back in the saddle and showed that pony who was boss.

(*If anyone should happen to see half a set of Keepers foot braces wandering around, would you tell it to get it's butt home.)

Paddled for about two hours and just enjoyed the heck out of it. But there was one thing that I really, really wish I had pictures of. I went up with four other guys, two rented a canoe there, one brought his two seater SOT fisher. The canoe guys kept razzing me how I didn't stand a chance against two guys in a canoe. At one point they were paddling away like crazy and I was doing a back stoke on one side to turn around. And I realized something. So I took off paddling, caught up to them and passed them.

Going backwards.

They were not amused. So they and the SOT guys got tired and we put in. I went out later and spent an hour or so sneaking up on ducks and turtles.

Came home, did a little work. Put on the deck bungees. Put in the back band. Did a little more carving on the minicel seat. Fiddled with the hatches some. They hadn't worked out right. I tried the earth magnets but figured instead of 1/2 inchers, I'd use more smaller ones. Sigh. I've now gone to bungee hold downs.

Late last Friday afternoon I put in on the Guadalupe River at I-10 and paddled upstream for about an hour and a half. Even though I was making pretty good time I thought I should have been doing better. And then I turned around. A-ha! I did the trip back in thirty minutes. So I guess against that current I was doing very well.

The only bad thing was, about 30 minutes into the paddle, I realized that the minicel seat that I'd spent time fine turning was still in the back seat of the truck. I'll let you figure out what made me realize I wasn't sitting on the minicel. (The boy just's a little slow, God love him.)

I was amazed at some of the houses I saw from the backside. Not so much the houses but what some people will do to have a boat dock. 30-40 foot cliff and there's a stair running down it to the dock. One house had a series of retaining walls that must have had a thousand railroad ties. Sheesh.

Any way, it's time for bed. I'm getting up early to take the baby up to Boerne Lake. This time I plan to actually use the seat.

Night all.

ps. Soon as it's purty I'll post pics.

Replies:

• Re: Just like Kurt!! by Doug on Jun 25, 2005
  • Re: Just like Kurt!! by Kurt Maurer on Jun 25, 2005
    • Re: Just like Kurt!! by Mike Delchambre on Jun 25, 2005
      • Re: Just like Kurt!! by Doug Rhude on Jun 25, 2005
• Re: Just like Kurt!! by George Jung on Jun 26, 2005