Last minute panics

We leave for this year's Everglades Challenge pre-sparrow fart tomorrow morning. The race starts Saturday, March 6.

I was fiddling with some last minute cockpit adjustments--kayak in the lounge, upside down spread across a couple of couches--when I noticed that one of the straps on my Bulldog Footrest had just about parted company with the stud on the rear side of the tiller bar. Yikes. Paddling my boat without a rudder is not a pretty sight, so this could have been a bit messy, if not downright embarrassing.

It took a bit of muscle in a tight compartment, with mirror and headlamp to get the fitting undone. But to fix it will require drilling out the pop rivets attaching the strap to the bar and fitting another couple of rivets to refit the strap to the bar.

Thankfully, Floatsome (aka. David) has the necessary equipment, and we'll be making the repairs at the Fort De Soto campsite, the day before the race. Plenty of time!

With much cooler weather predicted for this year's race, and nights near freezing, the WeeOne and I also made a last-minute dash to REI last night. My non-down sleeping bag is rated at 1C (30F), but I run on the chilly side. So I'm now the proud and hopefully warm owner of a lightweight mummy fleece liner, which should give me another 12C (10F) of warmth.

For those wishing to follow the race, you can keep an eye on the WaterTribe site, or follow along here: FliesWithKiwiBird and the WeeOne will be making updates as we head along!

Drinking system update

Well, we got the new drinking systems worked out, with great team work from SandyBottom, DancesWithSandyBottom and Floatsome.

We ended up using rubber push-in grommets, ordered from McMaster. We drilled 5/8" diameter holes in the deck, and just pushed through the grommets. Adding an O ring to the under side of the grommet made for a firm fit. The inside diameter of the grommets are 3/8", which is the same as our drinking tubes, and the widest width of the outside diameter is 7/8" (apologies for the lack of metric here ;)

And the beauty of this system? No epoxy, etc.

Since my seat is a pod, I'll have my four-litre dromedary between my legs. Dawn and David can tuck theirs in the gap between their seat back and aft bulkhead.

All-in-all, this should be a nice set up for this year's Everglades Challenge, starting this Saturday!

Wet feet

Last summer, the Wee One refused to wear the life jacket we had for him for the pool. Now that he's nearly three, one is able to reason with him a wee bit more--safety belt for the car, cycle helmet for on his bike, life jacket for kayaking/sailing. And the life jacket so he doesn't sink.

A week ago I took him to SandyBottom's (aka Dawn) while we messed about with kayaks, and Dawn popped him in her Core Sound 20 Dawn Patrol. He was so excited, he swore off kayaking and now believes sail is the only way to travel (!)

This weekend, we again went around to Dawn's, complete with a new life jacket I'd just picked up at REI, thinking that this would be the way to kick start him wearing it.

Sure enough, he's hooked!

Hydration systems

With this year's WaterTribe Everglades Challenge looming, I wanted to rethink my hydration system. I normally have a four litre MSR Dromedary lying in the bilge between my legs, with the drinking hose threaded up under my spray shirt and then under and out of clothing and PFD. While this means the mouth piece is in the general vicinity of my lips, it's been a pain in the rear when disembarking from the cockpit for a pit stop, or even wet exiting.

I figured, while off the coast of home paddling North Carolina, or even in the EC's large water expanses of Pine Island Sound, Florida, from a safety perspective it was not the smartest of drinking systems.

Where to relocate the hose and water bag was a first issue. Since my seat is a pod seat (see awful top photo from two ECs ago) and effectively a third bulkhead (the for'ad end of my "day hatch"), I can't have the waterbag behind my seat like many folks. And I'm not comfortable having a water bag in the day hatch--if need be, I can't change over the bag to a new one, as these hatches can't be opened and closed on the water. (My boat's designer/builder, Grahame Sisson, was the first to "invent" the day hatch, and he made all three hatches so secure, you can't open or close them on the water, which was his absolute intention--safety first.)

I started searching for an alternative cockpit-driven option, which, of course, would invariably necessitate drilling a(nother) hole in my dear boat.

The first decent piece of online advice I found was the renowned Ocker, GnarleyDog, who has a blog entry devoted to solving my dilemma. And true to DownUnder form, he answered a couple of my queries in rapid cyber-time.


Then EC2010 entry PaddlePeddler (aka Paul Shaw) chimed in via FaceBook with another solution: screwing in a Hobie Mirage shockcord end screw (to the left), to take the drinking hose. But this would have necessitated drilling a 7/8" hole, which is heck of a "hole."

The solution is still not absolutely confirmed, but sometime this week, SandyBottom, Floatsome and I will have it sussed, and we'll be happy to share our results.

Kind of training

While more dedicated WaterTribe paddlers than I were out training today for next month's Everglades Challenge, I happened to see an ad in this morning's News & Observer that the Toy Train Show was on at the NC State Fairgrounds.

(Trains... training... well, close enough.)

Knowing the Wee One's love of trains, and my more-than-mild affection for them myself, off we headed.

And for nearly fours hours we had a ball. In fact, I saw many youngsters being bodily hauled out at leaving, crying their eyes out--mine being one of them.

I don't know if we fit it, but there was definitely a "type" there ;)

Shasta "restoration" underway

Our 1972 Shasta Compact was towed away a couple of weeks ago by local NC restorer-extraordinaire Dan Hellier.

Last year I had managed to clean it out and completely reline/pad the ceiling and walls to protect ourselves from the non-skid paint the previous owner had employed, rough enough to take the hair off your skin. Lori had also sewn some fabulous curtains and we'd replaced the squabs with new 4" foam and covers.

It was looking pretty good and we'd already had a fabulous four days last September at Cedar Island, NC in it, but we had only mains power connection and no 12V nor battery source for that, the gas line to the original but working three-burner gas stove had been cut, some of the tow lights didn't work or needed replacing, the screen door tottered on its failing hinges, and we really needed a roof ventilation/fan unit of some sort.

Dan's already well under way with his work, and you can keep up with progress at his site.

Can't wait to get away again, with the kayak.

Icebreaker training

With this year's Everglades Challenge looming, a bit of time on the water makes a big difference, not only in training but the psychologybehind maybe the body can do another nearly 500km (300+) paddling race in six or seven days once again, is immeasurable.

Thus off Dawn (SandyBottom), David (Floatsome) and I set Saturday morning, for some distance and an overnighter on our local Jordan Lake. This will be David's first Everglades Challenge--his experience as a competent sailor and avid triathlete and IronMan should stand him in good stead, but this will be his first kayaking "expedition." Thus a bit of off-water camping was also on the weekend's itinerary.

We got a good 32kms (20 miles) in on Saturday, in perfect cool weather, but were thwarted from reaching the lake's inlet of the Haw River, with a couple of kms of ice, broken up on the fringes, but solid the further we went--and about 7cm or so thick. A bit dodgy for paddling in, so we turned around and headed back to set up camp. The soft sound of crackling ice--haven't heard that before.

It poured all night, our first rain for about three weeks after the average -9C temperatures we'd been experiencing for the past fortnight (hadn't quite appreciated how chilly it actually was until I converted from Farenheit!). After breakfast, we headed off into the fog...

... the view across from our campsite just peaking through as the sun rose...

and the stillness relished.

Inaugural NCC2009

Just returned from the inaugural WaterTribe North Carolina Challenge--more to come on that.

I didn't padde, though took all the gear, just in case. Still getting over a rather bad cold and didn't want to make it worse. Hard move.

But the photo above, taken by Doug-from-just-up-the-road sums up the true WaterTribe spirit. It took JarHead 90 minutes to get off the beach at the race start, but Marines *never* give up.

Nearly on the road again...

Nearly a year ago, we bought a 1970 Shasta Compact--FliesWithKiwiBird decided that she'd be happy to go on kayaking trips and the like, if she didn't have to wait from a small stuffy tent.

We bought the wee Shasta, complete with original wings (there's an entire new language in this community), from a chap in Greensboro, who very kindly delivered it for us. Yesterday, after Doug up the road had replaced the wheel bearings, I took it for its first spin, with the WeeOne fast asleep in the back seat. Doug followed from behind, taking the photo and checking out for alignment, tracking and the like. Happily to report, it was a dream to tow and everything looked just fine from the rear.

I've managed to get a bit of work done on the trailer, or caravan as we would say in NZ, but there's still quite a bit to do to get it "just right." The inside walls and ceiling had been painted with cream non-skid deck paint (we don't throw those kind of parties), which skinned one alive as one reclined. So I lined everything with a 2-3mm foam-type tan liner you'd see in plush cars--what a difference that makes, plus a huge scrub down everywhere else.

We threw out the old pretty rank squabs and bought new 4" foam--can't believe how much that stuff costs! We've covered those with sewn sheets to start with, until FliesWithKiwiBird finds the time to sew the real covers with the fabulous fabric we have hiding in a wardrobe. But the new curtains do need to be ready by Wednesday, as we're off to Cedar Island, out on North Carolina's Pamlico Sound, for the inaugural WaterTribe North Carolina Challenge 2009 (NCC2009).

Search on for Amundsen

Veteran Kiwi expedition leader Rob McCallum is leading a team to find the submerged plane of famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (above). Amundsen was aboard a Latham 47 flying boat (below) when the aircraft disappeared over the sea on its way to the Arctic island of Spitsbergen in 1928.

On 18 June 1928, Amundsen joined a rescue operation to save another competitor, the Italian aviator Umberto Nobile. Nobile had crashed his airship Italia on a return voyage from the North Pole, and he and his surviving crew members found themselves drifting helplessly on pack ice. Amundsen boarded a Latham 47 flying boat along with a team of French Air Force pilots to try to reach them.

McCallum and his team reckon the Latham 47 should have been about 19 nautical miles south of Bear Island when the plane's last radio message was picked up at 1845 on 18 June. Using an underwater robot, the equipment can get down to 20cm resolution on the sea bed. And it'll have to be precise as all that's probably left of the plywood-built plane is its engines.

More here.