Bulkheads, flamenco and gamelan

Today is the summer solstice and the first day of summer. There is a potential thunderstorm in the weather forecast. In the morning I visit Mike and Ruth and while chatting in the garden (Ruth is weeding her tomatoes), we can hear thunder. Mike starts telling me stories about people being struck by lightning. By the time I leave, the thunder is much closer and I am beginning to worry about it.

While chatting with Mike about the kayak, we decide that the next best step for me might be to make some templates for the bulkheads that I will eventually want to install. The deck is soon going to be permanently glued to the hull and it will be a lot harder to make a template after that. Mike digs out some cardboard boxes from his woodshed for me to use.

I cycle over to the Garden House with the cardboard. I then walk over to the outer field to look at the sky to see how close the storm is. Big black clouds loom on the south, and appear to be moving northward toward us. Mike had said the safest places to be in a storm are in a car or in a massive building. I decide that Fritz's house is more massive than the Garden House, I'd rather be at home than in the workshop when the storm hits. So I leave the cardboard in the Garden House and head home again.

The thunder is getting closer and closer, but still no rain. The sun finally disappears, but still no rain. I think I might as well do something useful while I wait so I start gathering kindling from under the spruce trees along the edge of the vault. Then I notice that the thunder is getting fainter, it appears to be moving away. After a few minutes I am quite sure that that is the case, there is not going to be a storm after all. I make some lunch and read for a bit until I cannot hear the thunder at all and the sun is back. No storm. I think it must have moved up the Valley, bypassing the North Mountain.

I return to the Garden Shed, do a bit of sanding of the deck and measuring for my bulkhead templates. But after working hard over the past few days, I am feeling lazy and disinclined to complete the job. I cut out some strips of cardboard and wire them together to use to measure seam angles, mark with masking tape roughly where I think the bulkheads ought to be, and cut out some rectangles of cardboard that will eventually be the bulkhead templates.

There will be two bulkheads, fore and aft, and I want two templates for each bulkhead, one to fit in the hull and the other to fit in the underside of the deck, with a 2" overlap between them. Figuring out the location of the aft bulkhead is easy, it will be an inch or so behind the cockpit opening. The fore bulkhead is a little more tricky, I need the cockpit to be long enough for my legs and possibly the legs of a taller person, but I don't know how much I should allow for that, since I am just guessing that I might be letting someone else use my kayak when it is done. I also have to allow for the length of the footrest pieces and I only have the vaguest notion of what that might be. I finally settle on a distance of 56" from the back of the cockpit to the fore bulkhead and mark that location with masking tape.

I also filed down the "bow bubble" from when I poured thickened epoxy into the bow the other day.

That's it for today. Ruth wants to go into town for a concert at Heather's place, Ken Shorley on percussion and Bob Sotherby(?) playing flamenco guitar, so I go with her. My inclination is to say No and stay home, but my instinct is to go nevertheless.

The concert is wonderful. Ken plays a variety of drums and shakers from around the world and a Southeast Asian gamelan, Bob plays several different flamenco styles. At intermission there is wine and cheese and biscuits and fresh strawberries dipped in chocolate. Very tasty! After the intermission Bob and Ken play together, a fusion of Spanish, Thai and Arabic styles.

It really is quite amazing the musical talents in this part of the world.