Everything on my blog, including talking animals, is true. In case you had doubt, here are a few photos from my walkabout.
Back at camp just before sunset. Pretty isn’t it?
For several days while camping, this is what I saw as I brewed my morning coffee.
It’s only a tiny boat, but the water’s just as blue and beautiful.
Someone (not me) said “small boat, big adventure”. It is true that things get lively when waves are a couple feet high. Not too crazy, I reefed the sail and that seemed adequate. The boat handles waves better than the novice captain.
I pulled up to an unnamed island and felt like Tom Sawyer exploring for pirate treasure. What a silly and wondrous thing it is to wander around a little island, barefoot in the sand, thinking “this is my island”. At least for a while… it was all mine.
Exploring Tom Sawyer Island.
I can row whenever the wind stops. I’m still working on the ergonomics. At first is was chaos. Then I fiddled with the reef points to get the boom to hang above my head, pulled the rudder above water, removed the daggerboard, and everything calmed down. It worked! Not as fun as sailing, but I wasn’t stuck without options in windless conditions.
The boat is capable of sailing in “thin” water. If I pull the daggerboard and retract the rudder it can float along in almost nothing.
The new tent is a success. The kayak was my “backup plan” if the boat didn’t work out.
In this photo my gear is a bit of a mess, but you can see I’ve got room for a decent amount of camping/fishing gear. That cheap nylon anchor rode is total shit. It seems to exist only to tangle around me feet. I’m going to replace that. Also I can easily move at “canoe speed” while eating Pringles. Win!
Notice the inspection port for the port side buoyancy tank. (There’s another one on the starboard buoyancy tank too.) It’s not strictly necessary to have an inspection port on a small boat like this but I cut a hole in both perfect airboxes anyway. I had two reasons. First, I can cram gear in there. Pretty much anything that can fit in an 8″ circle can go in the airbox. Once I know what’s most useful I’ll probably stick some tools and emergency gear in there permanently. Second, I wanted to be able to cross the American/Canadian border without some badged nitwit freaking out that I’ve sealed six kilos of coke in the airbox. (No insult intended to our friends to the north. Almost every Canadian border guard I’ve met has been kind and reasonable. The nitwits are from my side.)
By the way, dual redundant airboxes… how cool is that? You could hit this thing with a meteor and it wouldn’t swamp. Small but (within reason) safe is the way to go. I haven’t done a capsize test but will try it when the water’s warmer. Having built it myself I’m pretty confident in the craft’s seaworthiness.
Speaking of nitwits, this is the sign installed to keep people like me from doing precisely what I was pondering.
All I needed was a few tablespoons of cheap coffee grounds. What I got were two bottles of Starbucks Frappuccino. They probably saved my caffeine addicted life. I intend to pay it forward someday… I’ll become the Johnny Appleseed of overpriced sugary Frappuccino?
