The boat is complete, and the only things left are little packing details and logistics. My buddy Kyle has had to drop out at the last minute which had me scrambling for another sailing buddy. The person who will be taking Kyle's place, Chad, actually has sailing experience so that gives me a little more peace of mind regarding my inexperience. I have to confess though that while I'm very excited, I'm also quite nervous about this trip. The ocean scares me. All that big expanse of water with capacity for extremes... My lack of sailing experience... Knowing there's no turning back once we hit that beach... Knowing that I don't really know what to expect out there... So much out of my control; A test of my faith that God only ever intends the best for me and that no matter what happens, none of it is outside his control. Not that that gives me license for stupidity. He also gave me a brain and I'm accountable to use it! We're going to do what it takes to get this boat up the coast safely... and we're going to try to have some fun while doing it!
So the crew now consists of --- Sesi (a close buddy of mine from here in Mibu), Chad (a fellow expat missionary whom I've never met but who has sailing experience), and myself.
Oh, a couple small details I neglected to post: I finally made the tiller extension. Not a big deal, but it did turn out nice. I don't have the hardware for snapping the extension in place when not in use and I didn't like the prospect of shaping my own simply because all the solutions leave either a potential body gasher, should one ever fall or slip or whatever and land on top of it, or they take too much time and effort to lash, clip, bolt, or otherwise attach in place on the fly. So I dug out one of my old hard drive magnets, recessed it in the tiller, recessed a washer in the extension handle, filled both over with epoxy, and got myself a sweet setup for keeping the extension in place. Those hard drive magnets (rare earth magnets) are super strong so I imagine it'll hold through most any rough handling that comes about.
And then even though I was going to just settle for the three curved shaft paddles I'd made, I decided it would be best to have a fourth, in case one or two of them get lost or broken. This one is based off of Tim Anderson's quick paddle, cut out of plywood, glued and lashed to the handle. Though the way I made it turned it into not-such-a-quick-paddle. It's straight handled. But I didn't have a single piece of timber I thought was stiff enough for the job so I had to laminate three pieces. Then I didn't have a thinner piece of plywood for the blade, so I used a 12mm thick piece and had to round the backside (hence the interesting looking dark lines that you see). I also decided I wanted a tapered handle. All that took up time, making it take almost as long as my nicer (in my opinion) curved shaft paddles. Oh well... I have 4 paddles between the three of us. It's done. By the way, that little nick in the lower edge of the blade is a knot in one of the layers of the plywood. It's on the back edge of of the blade so shouldn't mess things up... hopefully.
And then one of the more mundane details, but it's almost comical so I deemed it worth posting... at least the picture. This is the supposedly waterproof bag I bought over a year ago for this trip. It's obviously well used, and when I tested for leaks, I found them everywhere. Now I know why it was being sold for only 5 bucks! So I've set about patching it using shoe goo and innertube rubber on the outside, then I found some old seam sealer I still had from way back when in my backpacking days. I had enough to coat the inside of the bag. Now the bag resembles a blue leopard, but should keep water out at least for this trip, which is all I need it for.
Probably not a whole lot more to post about until right before we head out the first week of March.
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