New project boat

My newest project boat is a Navarro Loon 17 canoe.

This was once a beautiful boat, but it was neglected for a long time, and fell off of a moving car at least once.  It has significant damage to the hull, and the gunnels are almost entirely ruined.  (The seats are in excellent condition--I think the previous owner may have replaced them instead of repairing all the other problems.)

And the boat has a cat on it--I'm sure that wasn't there when I bought it.

Some of the cherry-wood ribs are broken or cracked.  I may have to settle for quick-n-dirty fixes for those, since the damaged ribs are over the places where the hull is damaged, and getting the hull fixed takes precedence over aesthetic concerns.  I guess I'll try repairing the other parts of the hull that need it as practice, and then see if I have the chops to salvage the ribs and repair the adjacent hull.

The bow (or it could be the stern, it's hard to tell) is smashed up.  I don't doubt that I can repair it, but I'm going to have to come up with some other scheme for attaching the painter, since the brass painter loop has had it.  The cat doesn't seem to be damaged, but may have suffered some sort of emotional trauma.

There's a hole in the bow (or stern) that I think was caused when the fiberglass was abraded away when the canoe hit the road after falling off a car.  The uppermost end of the bow was almost damaged, but may have been partially protected by the brass painter loop.

I don't have a table saw or a band saw, or the patience to to cut 20-some feet of wood by hand, so I'm on the lookout for some hardwood strips that are around the right size to make the gunnels.  If you happen to live near Crockett, and would like an opportunity to use a canoe or kayak, maybe you could help me re-saw some wood to make the new gunnels for this boat.

I'm hoping that I can use this canoe for one or two camping trips, and maybe for a multi-day camping trip in the delta.  I'll probably have to settle for some day trips on a local slough, if I can talk someone else into manning the second paddle.

Access to Lone Tree Park in Rodeo

The last time I went by Lone Tree a gate had been installed to block off the only parking adjacent to the park.  I suppose this was done after many complaints by the owners of the Joseph's Resort lot about trespassers on their property.  You may be able to park on the bridge at the end of Pacific Ave., or on the end of San Pablo Ave, and maybe in the marina (the gates are locked at 4:30 or 5:00pm).

So--you can probably still launch at Lone Tree, but it's become a bigger hassle.  Portage time (one way) was a few minutes to cart your stuff from the car to the beach; now it's probably five to ten minutes.  I've launched there a couple of times this summer, but I don't think I'm going to bother to launch there again, even tho it's one of the very few places that I know of where it's possible to get a kayak to the water on the east side of San Pablo Bay.  The other spots, incidentally, also suffer from limited access, or long portage times, or from poor access to the water when the tide is low.

A bit of research with Google indicates that development of the the Rodeo Marina area will be delayed indefinitely by legal and financial issues, and it seems likely to me that access to Lone Tree isn't going to improve until a serious effort to redevelop the marina area gets underway.

I've made a Google map with notes about put-ins and access to the water in the marina area and on the east shore of San Pablo Bay between Crockett and Point Pinole.


Edit, May 2013
The following text is from http://rodeomarina.com/:

There is currently a "fair" weather launch ramp that opens directly onto San Pablo Bay. An annual use fee of $100 is required. Launch Ramp access is at the user's own risk.
... 

Rodeo Marina is anticipating phased redevelopment of the site for a series of uses.  These uses include a restaurant, urban winery, wooden boat building shop, marine repair facility, harbor master building, bed and breakfast inn, several mixed-use commercial buildings, boat docks, boat storage, small boat launch ramp, and public access to the San Pablo Bay frontage.

 ...

A Vision for the Marina:  Water-Oriented "Eco" Resort

Rodeo Marina could be a location where the bicyclist, kayaker, paddle boarder, wind surfer, fisherman and other active individuals who enjoy the bay would be able to recreate.  The Rodeo Waterfront currently has excellent access to a variety of outdoor settings.  Its views across the bay toward Mt. Tamalpais are quite beautiful.  It is an excellent starting point for bicycling activities.  In the future both the Water Trail and the Bay Trail could connect to this location.

Folding kayak from salvaged materials

I was collecting broken windsurfing booms and other unwanted things made with aluminum tubing so I could make some kayak carts.  After a while I realized that I might be able to collect enough material to make a folding aluminum kayak similar to the ones at Yostwerks --the Sea Otter, for instance.

I think that I currently have enough tubing--if I include the curved parts of the booms--to make a 15' boat. 

Salvaged tubing from windsurfing booms.

Above is a photo (taken in very bad light) of some of the stuff I've collected so far.  On the far right and the far left, respectively, are a carbon fiber boom and a carbon fiber paddle; these would be for the middle and one end of the keel.  There are two 'orphans,' the broken-off parts of a boom set (that I don't have the rest of), and one of these would form the rest of the keel.

There are two complete pairs of booms (including the sliding\adjustable part that attaches to the clew of the sail), and these would be for the gunnels.  I have three lengths of 5' by 1" tubing, and the excess tubing from the keel and gunnels construction, to make a pair of chines.

The bulkheads are going to be made from preformed aluminum parts from a walker and from another thing with a similar shape that I rescued from a dumpster.  (Update: the bulkhead frames at the ends will be made with 1/2" HDPE from the scrap bin at TAP Plastics, and the others will be made from white oak.)  These will take some finagling, but they ought to work.  The cockpit could be the hardest part.  I'm going to try bending some 3/4" tubing from crutches (I have several salvaged pairs of these), and if I can't make that work I'll use wood or make an open-style cockpit.

So, I've got all this stuff... and what's stopping me from starting construction of the frame is the design.  I don't know if I can use one of Tom Yost's designs as-is because I want to include the curved parts of the booms in the design, and Tom's designs use straight tubing with a smaller diameter.  I don't think the tubing I'm using will bend easily enough to be used for one of the Yostwerks' boats.

I'm stuck for now, but eventually I'll come up with a plan that I think is adequate and start cutting stuff up, and if I get that done (without a strongback, since I don't have the materials or budget to build one) I'll start think about how I'm going to skin the boat.

Update:  I got some 7' ipe  deck planks to make a strongback from, but I'm still stalled until I can clear away enough junk to have room to set up the strongback.  I found a possible source for skin material, but I haven't been able to get it home from the junk store.

Update:  I no longer have a place to set up a strongback, so this project has been stalled for months.  I have a set of frames for a Sea Tour 15, but not much else is done.

The next kayak cart

I'm planning to build another kayak cart.  This one will have an aluminum frame that can be configured as a small, portable cart for camping, and as a large, too-big-to-fit-in-the-yak cart for hauling the boat from the parking lot to the shore.  The larger size should be useful for navigating places like the small hill at Eckley where a wider wheel base and a longer frame might add enough stability to keep whole thing from rolling (which can be a problem at Eckley). 

 

Aluminum-frame folding golf bag cart

I'm hoping that I can get by with only the existing frame parts and some stainless steel fasteners.  The wheels (like the ones on my old cart) are some kind of dense foam material that seems to work well on concrete, sand, and gravel, but isn't likely to be long-lasting.  I might try adding bike-tire skins to the wheels so that the outer foam part won't wear out before the inner plastic rim gives out.

The frame of the cart shown in the photo is aluminum with some steel parts and some nylon parts, and with plain steel fasteners.  The wheels are detachable, so if all else fails I will at least have a spare pair of wheels.

Project boats

I'm outfitting an old fiberglass river kayak for flat water.  This boat's a lot like the one that I used for a couple of years before I got the Necky Looksha Sport LV, so I didn't have any reservations about adopting it.

The red river kayak

I got this as an almost-bare hull (it had foot pedals) and I added deck bungees fore and aft of the cockpit, a temporary seat made from an old PFD, a temporary strap-in skeg, carry handles at the bow and stern, and shock cord (from a ruined tent fly) to keep the handles from flopping around.

Deck rigging and the temporary seat

Grab handle on the bow

I also added grab lines along the gunnels.  The forward ends are connected with the same bolts that anchor the foot pedals, and the after ends are just tied around the stern.  I plan to eventually replace the lines (which are currently cheap braided plastic rope from Harbor Freight) and add some kind of anchor points for the stern end of the lines.

Stern rigging

There are holes thru the bow and stern ends for lines to use for carrying the boat.  I used some thin cord thru these holes to anchor the carrying handles because I wasn't able to disassemble the handles and run the attached cords thru the holes in the boat.  This arrangement seems to work--for now.  Like everything but the deck bungees this is likely to be temporary.

The kayak before its first sea trial.

The kayak on the Carquinez Strait.

The Tyne folding kayak

I bought a Tyne wooden-frame folding kayak at a garage sale a couple of months ago.  (The boat was made be Tyne Canoes Ltd., or Tyne Folding Boats Ltd.--I don't know which is correct yet.)  The seller mentioned that it needed work, but neglected to mention that one of the bulkheads was missing.  I've managed to replace or repair many of the parts (both wood parts and brass parts; some of the new parts need more work), and because I was sufficiently distracted by the missing or broken things I didn't realize that the center bulkhead was missing altogether.  I can make a replacement bulkhead, but after having done the rest of the repairs, and thinking I was almost done, finding that a major part of the frame was missing has killed my enthusiasm for the project.  If you want to buy a project boat (wood frame and hypalon skin, for what it cost me so far), let me know.

Note, November 2012:  I bought a Folbot Super at another garage sale.  It's similar to the Tyne, but newer, and complete as-is, so that it's not really a project boat.  I'm probably going to sell one or the other of them if I ever finish making parts for the Tyne and get it on the water.

Ospreys of Mare Island

I have lots of bad shots of nesting birds that I think are ospreys.  The best shots are in my flickr.com photostream.

There are three lighting structures with nests in them, and I think two are shown here.

Photos from the strait

These are a few photos that I didn't feel like posting on flickr.com.

Otters in Suisun Bay.  The photo sucks, but it isn't as bad as most of the wildlife photos I've shot from the kayak.  I have some really lousy pictures of sea lions, a harbor seal, a big group of pelicans, and a few ospreys.

The Eckley wharves

The Mount Fisher at the C&H dock

BTW:  I lost my glasses in the Carquinez Strait near Dillon Point (at the Benicia State Recreation Area) a few days ago.  They had (or should have had) a neoprene strap that might keep them afloat, so they could turn up in Southhampton Bay, Benicia, Glen Cove, Crockett, Port Costa, Mare Island, the Farallons...let me know if you find them.

And:
I found an A's cap in the Strait; let me know if you lost one.