Arrival day

I was up early to get my breakfast. Turns out one of the trucks parked at the rest area had a boxer in it. The truck driver brought her out for a little exercise and she and Dobby immediately recognized each other as fellow boxers. They fell into a fifteen minute boxer romp, up and down the grassy picnic area. There's nothing like it, they are instantaneous best buddies, running shoulder to shoulder one way and then the other. They bite each other and shove and pull, a favourite boxer thing to do is to grab the other boxer's loose lips and chew on them, in full gallop.

So both boxers got their morning exercise before a long truck ride out. It was cloudy and cool, and stayed that way most of the day, so a much cooler drive. Dobby slept a lot.

The storm the previous night had loosened one tie-down, but after retying it I had no further problem, the ropes and tie-downs stayed firm all the way to Toronto. I arrived in the city around sunset. I know the route pretty well but was tired enough to make a wrong turn that cost me an extra twenty minutes getting back on track. Driving across the downtown area of Toronto on the Gardiner Expressway is impressive any time of day, but especially so at night. It's an amazing sight to drive on an elevated highway through all the big office buildings of the downtown core.

I parked just around the corner from the house. I am not sure if Dobby knew where he was when I let him out of the truck, but as we walked around the corner I let him lead the way to see if he knew where we were going. He saw a cat cross the road. His first impulse was to go after it, but right then we were in front of our house. He was definitely torn.

He decided to turn toward the house. He walked up to the porch steps and gave them a thorough sniffing. Slowly he climbed the stairs and I opened the porch gate for him. His tail started going. He walked up to the door and I rang the doorbell for him. He was clearly excited, and a little impatient: why didn't I just open the door for him?

Isaac opened the door. Dobby could not contain himself, he jumped right through the missing screen window and leaped up at Isaac and then Gretel right behind him, nearly knocking little Phelan over in the process. Phelan ran to get out of the way behind me.

Two months on the road and he's finally home.

Departure day

In spite of getting up at 6.30am, and having done a lot of packing after returning from the kayak launch the night before, it still took me until noon to be ready to leave. Amazing how long it can take to pack up and leave.

Dobby and Max and Moose and Sheila and I took one last walk, we all said our goodbyes.

I stopped in Wolfville for a quick lunch with Carolyn before hitting the road. By 1.30pm we were heading out of town, my goal was to make it to the Quebec border before stopping.

Every time I stopped for gas or exercise, I checked the kayak ropes and tie-downs, everything stayed secure. It was a sunny warm day, kind of hot in the truck so Dobby was restless and didn't seem able to get comfortable. So we stopped a lot.

In northern New Brunswick just after sunset I started seeing flashes of red light in the clouds ahead of us. The red almost full moon was rising in the east, off to our right. The flashing got more and more spectacular, spreading east and west. Clearly we were headed into a storm. Finally I saw forked lightning and then the rain hit. Could see nothing, the road just looked like a sheet of water, and there was no sky to speak of. I'm glad there was hardly any traffic to worry about, I slowed way down and just kept plowing through the water.

After awhile the rain abated, and shortly after that we crossed into Quebec. I pulled off at the first rest area and set up for the night. There were several big trucks there, including a truck full of cattle, stomping and mooing. I settled Dobby into the truck cab for the night and I climbed into my bed in the back. It was just about midnight.

Launch day

It was fabulous!






We hauled our three kayaks down to the beach and prepared to launch.






Coincidentally, something was going on at one end of the beach that caused a burst of applause, just as I was pushing off onto the water. Mike and Ruth laughed and gave me a round of applause too.









We had a lovely paddle. It was quite windy at Kingsport, probably not as bad as Baxter's Harbour and not rocky either.







We headed down wind to get around the point into the protection of the high sandstone cliffs and spent an hour or two paddling along the shore out of the wind.







Because we were so late launching, we returned to Kingsport a couple of hours after the tide had turned and was heading out.

So when we rounded the point to return to the beach, we were headed both upwind and against the tide.




I paddled as hard as I could just to stay in place! It was probably the most strenuous paddling I have ever done in my life. The beach looked so far away, I wondered if I would ever make it.

But finally, I was just behind Ruth heading into the beach. Then, the wind caught my bow and turned me around! I tried very hard to steer against the wind but to no avail. I was forced to head back out to sea and do a wide loop to come around in the opposite direction. Mike and Ruth were already beached and out of their spray skirts when I pulled in, quite exhausted.

Ruth and I carried the kayak back up to the truck. Dobby had waited patiently in the truck during our little paddle, so I let him out while I worked on getting the kayak back on the roof rack. Mike helped. The ramp seemed to work OK, but we both agreed that it could use some improvements to really work well.

Meanwhile, Dobby headed down to the beach to check out a dead skate that had washed up. I couldn't see him there, and after getting the kayak secured to the truck I went hunting for him. Some French Canadians signalled to me his location and I called him. It was clear that the skate was way too fascinating for him to come when called, so I went back to the truck to get his leash.

A few minutes later I got down to the beach where he was to leash him up and haul him back to the truck. But he was standing with a woman on a cell phone who had apparently called the local SPCA (or equivalent) about a lost dog on the beach. She had called in his Toronto dog tag number, the SPCA had patched through a call to the Toronto Animal Control Services who had contacted my son Isaac about his lost dog on the beach in Kingsport Nova Scotia. Then I showed up with the leash, secured Dobby and walked away with him. The woman was a bit shocked and just hung up the phone!

I am assuming that Isaac will figure out what happened, and know that nothing serious has happened if he does not get a frantic call from me about losing his dog.

Mounting the kayak on the truck

Today is the official launch day.

It started windy and foggy, but the weather forecast was for sunny clear skies so we are going ahead. However, the strong winds prevent launching from the Harbour, there is no way I could handle the wind and waves and rocks there. So we will take the kayaks (mine, Ruth's and Mike's) down to Kingsport, a sandy protected beach on the Minas Basin at the head of the Bay of Fundy.

I went out to the Garden House early to get my kayak onto my truck. I couldn't mount it on Saturday because of the rain, so I was hoping to get it done first thing this morning.

Not a chance! It was awful!

First I had to get it out of the Garden House and on to the Wheeleez that I bought in Halifax on Thursday. One door was blocked by Mike and Rick's flagpole, the other by a tarp-covered steel wood stove. Somehow I maneouvred the kayak past the stove and onto the grass. Then I tried to mount it on the Wheeleez. No instructions of course, and my first attempt was not great, the kayak fell off half way from the Garden House to the road. I re-tied it, more firmly I hoped. This time I was able to drag it down the road to the truck, parked by the open field. In the wind.

My first effort to get the kayak on the truck was from the rear, I positioned the kayak behind the truck, got up on the tailgate and attempted to pull the bow up onto the rear roofrack crosspiece. This did not work, and I managed to drag the stern abour a foot along the gravel road, abraiding off all the urethane on the keel. However to my unpracticed eye, it looked like I had torn off the fibreglass and I was starting to get a little freaked out.

However, figuring there was nothing to be done about it now, I moved the kayak to the front of the truck and attempted to mount the kayak over the hood and cab of the truck. I tried to cover the truck with big sheets of cardboard to protect the truck and kayak from each other, but the wind kept blowing them off. I'd get the cardboard on, pick up the bow of the kayak, the wind would come up and blow the cardboard off. I'd put the kayak down, the wind would die and I would replace the cardboard and pick up the kayak again. The wind would come up and blow the cardboard off. This went on several times before I managed to get the kayak onto the cardboard before the wind came back up.

This strategy worked no better than the previous one. All along, poor Dobby was underfoot and trying to lick my face, and my own frustration level was mounting to the point of taking it out on the dog, causing him to be even more nervous and even more underfoot and in my face.

So, I put the kayak in the grass on the side of the road and drove back to Mike and Ruth's. I recounted my efforts to get the kayak on the truck, and Mike said he'd come see what he could do.

Mike assured me I had only removed the urethane on the stern and that was nothing to worry about. He agreed that the roof rack was way too high, and we were going to have to come up with some strategy that allowed me to mount the kayak by myself. After much discussion we came up with the idea of a kind of ramp and went to the Garden House to see what was available to construct a ramp from.

The first ramp (yes, there was more than one), was made from one of the cradles that the kayak used to sit on the sawhorses, nailed to a ten foot long board. We used it to slide the kayak up from one side of the truck, onto the forward roof rack. We successfully got the kayak up onto the roof rack, but now it looked extremely precarious, mounted so high off the roof. I suggested we turn it upside down.

Somehow Mike managed to do that. It looked a little more stable upside down. Mike said he was not happy with the ramp we had constructed and had seen someone else use something he thought might work better, basically just two 1x4s nailed together at right angles creating a trough to slide the bow of the kayak up. So we went back to his place and he quickly constructed the second ramp from some boards he had lying around. We tied this second ramp onto the roofrack next to the kayak, using some short bungee cords I had in my truck toolbox. We would test it out at Kingsport.

I can't tell you how frustrating and stressful this whole operation was, except to say I am sure glad I have no photos because they wouldn't be pretty!

We were aiming to be at Kingsport two hours before high tide, but mounting my kayak took so long that we just barely made it half an hour before high tide.

Driving down the mountain with my precious kayak on the roof for the very first time, in high winds, was bite-your-nails, clench-your-teeth, white-knuckled gripping the steering wheel and eyes-glued to the side view mirrors time all the way down.

But all was well, we arrived safely at the Kingsport wharf and beach.

End of an era

The weather today is postponing the launch until tomorrow, in fact it is postponing everything. I can't even pack the truck.

Mike and Rick planned to cut a flagpole for the Baxter's Harbour Community Centre, in preparation for the democracy celebration party coming up in September. Sheila, Nancy and I were walking the dogs and we ran into them in the woods, hauling out their new flagpole-to-be.

I showed off my completed kayak to Sheila and Nancy, and then Mike and Rick showed up to "evict" me from the Garden House. Mike said, the kayak is done, we need the sawhorses!

After they put in some time admiring the kayak, they lifted it off the sawhorses and put it on a tarp on the floor.

So it's official now, the kayak is really done. I was almost a bit sad to see it come off the sawhorses, the end of what seemed like an era!

The kayak is off the saw horses

Mike announced that I was finished the kayak and took away his two sawhorses, because he needed them for another project. He said I threaded the buckles on the straps wrong; I said, Well you do it right then, I'm going to walk the dogs with Sheila and Nancy. When I came back he had threaded one buckle correctly, and I threaded the rest the same way. He also threaded one piece of bungee cord on the deck in front of the cockpit, I threaded the one in the rear of the cockpit and also one piece forward of the front hatch.

I noticed my truck had a flat tire, must have happened last night. I changed the tire and took the flat one in to Canadian Tire in the Valley to get repaired. Got them to fix my windshield wiper too. Between walking the dogs, threading the bungee cords and fixing the flat tire, that was pretty much my day. I would have put the kayak on the roof rack but it rained for a good part of the day and I wasn't up for struggling with it in the rain.

We decided to launch the kayak on Sunday since the weather today was pretty crappy. Nancy will probably not be able to come because she works on Sunday, but Carolyn, Ruth and Mike will come. Ideally we will launch in the Harbour and maybe paddle down to Black Hole, but if the waves are too high then we will go to Kingsport and launch there. Dobby killed a bird today on our walk. It was injured, one wing looked pretty bad and smelled worse. I tried to keep him away from the bird but failed. I saw him later with one little foot sticking out of his mouth, I made him open his mouth and the dead bird was there. It had maggots on its injured wing so it was a goner anyway, I suppose Dobby just put a quick end to its misery. I did a bit of packing but not much, there isn't much left to pack. I think getting the kayak on the roof rack tomorrow is going to be a big task. Mike thought it would be funny to photograph me struggling to get it up there by myself. Ha ha.

Kayak finished

This will be my last post for a bit. I got the last inchworms on the kayak and drilled another hole in the hull, at the stern for tying the kayak down to the truck. It is essentially ready to launch.

Unfortunately the weather is being unpredictable, so I don't know if I am launching Saturday or Sunday. I am heading back to Toronto on Monday.

I spent this afternoon packing up and then went out for dinner with Carolyn and her parents. To Stirlings for a hamburger, milkshake and peach crisp. Fresh local peaches.

Tomorrow I get to figure out how to mount the kayak on my truck. I hope that works out well, it's kind of crucial!

I'd love to post a photo of the kayak done, but the Garden House is too small to get the kayak into a single photo. So photos will have to wait until I have time to post again, which won't be until I get to Toronto.

Last trip to the city

We went out early to walk the dogs because I wanted to get away early to the city. Before I left I did another coat of urethane on the deck. The urethane is so easy! It is downright pleasurable to use urethane instead of epoxy. And so quick!

I had a fairly successful trip into town to get what I need to finish the kayak. I got a different kayak cockpit cover, some inchworms, some rope and tie-downs for transporting the kayak. It started raining around 1.00pm and rained hard for the rest of the day. I was back home by 5.00pm.

When I got home it was cold in the house so I decided to light a fire, but to do that I needed to chop a log into kindling. Got thoroughly wet doing that, and of course by that time the wood was wet too so it was a pretty slow fire getting started.

Out of nowhere a bat appeared sitting on the wood stove. I tried to shoo it off the stove before it burned its feet but it just hissed at me. I finally got it onto the floor and then caught it in a plastic bag to put outdoors. For some reason it did not want to fly. It crawled under the house to get out of the rain. Very strange watching a bat crawl, it has little claws on its wings and it has to spread its wings to crawl.

I may add pictures later, but right now I am in a bit of a hurry.

The last bolt

Yesterday when I told Sheila that I broke my new camera she told me I should get another one but I said there was no way I was buying another camera. She bet I would have a new camera today. I guess she was right.





She brought her camera along and we merrily took pictures of everything in sight, kids, dogs, mushrooms, whatever.







Riley, the kid next door came along on our walk. Riley has been sick with a sore throat the last few days, this is his first outing since he fell ill.

Today I just have to attach the straps and buckles, the "inch worms", and the foot pedals to the kayak and it is Done! More or less. Nancy came by and we talked about a launch date (tentatively, Saturday) and walked Dobby and her dog Chezzah. Nancy would like to come out with her kayak too.







I didn't start actual work on the kayak till late in the afternoon and it went rather slowly. I mixed a small amount of epoxy to put in each hole before I inserted the nuts and bolts. This is to make the holes waterproof. Because I was working with epoxy I was wearing the respirator and latex gloves, but it was extremely awkward to handle tiny nuts and washers with the sticky gloves. First I took the respirator off, then one layer of gloves. Lately I have been wearing two pairs of gloves, it seems to make them last longer. But even just one pair of gloves was awkward. I eventually gave up even that.

Although slow, most of the bolts were not to hard to insert. But the bolts for the foot pedals were difficult, particularly the forward bolts which I could barely reach. The same problem as for sanding the forward bulkhead on the cockpit side.







I managed to get one foot pedal on, but not the other. At one point I asked Sheila to help me but even so we could not get that last bolt in. I managed to get every bolt in except that one.

I also tested my skirt and cockpit cover, discovering that they were too small. I wasn't sure what to do about that, I could either get longer bungee cords to fit into the skirt and cover to loosen them up a bit, or I could trade them in for the next larger size. This seemed like the easier solution, but I needed to call Mountain Equipment to make sure they had the next larger size. They did, and they would hold them for me.

Later in the evening I talked to Mike and Ruth about it and they were very surprised that my skirt was too small. Mike said he'd check it for me. At 9.00pm we went to the Garden House with Ruth's skirt and mine and put the kayak on the floor to get into it to put the skirt on. I had tried to put the skirt on while the kayak was still up on the sawhorses, but Mike said you really had to do it sitting inside the kayak. Sure enough, it fit fine when the kayak was on the floor and I was sitting inside it.

I mentioned the problem with the foot pedal bolt and Mike helped me get the bolt started in the hole. I did not tighten it right up because I want to add a bit of epoxy to the hole, and I can do that when I add the two extra "inch worms" to the bow.

Tomorrow I will go into Halifax one more time to get a couple more inch worms and some wheels for moving the kayak around. Also rope for tying the kayak on my roof rack, and a small carpet to slide the kayak over the edge of the truck onto the roof rack.

So Thursday, another trip to the City, then Friday install the two extra inch worms and the final foot pedal bolt, and then start packing up to leave. Saturday or Sunday, launch the kayak. Monday, head out for Toronto. This is not what I wanted to do, I wanted to have some time here after the kayak was finished. But things just aren't working out that way.

The universe transforms itself

Today I urethaned the deck and went into town. The urethane painting went so fast that I also added a second coat to the upper parts of the hull.

In town I returned all the wrong nuts and bolts to get about $18.00 back. I bought myself a Caesar Chicken Wrap and a walnut raisin loaf, and went out for dinner with Carolyn with my riches. Well, dinner cost me more than $18.00 but no matter.

Last night I dropped my brand new camera and it broke. In the morning I called the manufacturer to see what they could do for me but basically, nothing. Dropping your camera is not covered by warranty, and the cost of fixing it was going to be the cost of the camera itself. I was pretty disgusted with myself for that one. That was part of the rationale for returning all the wrong nuts and bolts for the cash, that since I'd just written off a $180 camera, I needed to recoup a bit in whatever way I could. I also thought I'd go back to Staples and see if I could get my money back on the Extended Warranty that I bought for the camera, which is now useless since it does not kick in until the manufacturer's warranty expires and the camera is toast now.

So I packed up the broken camera and the receipt and all my nuts and bolts and their receipts and headed down into the Valley. At Staples I went to the customer service desk and asked for my money back on the extended warranty.

The woman there got this worried look on her face, and said, Wouldn't you rather just have a new camera?

That kind of took me aback, I sure wasn't expecting that.

A new camera?

Yes, just bring in the old one and we'll replace it.

Well, I've got it out in the truck, I'll just go get it.

I go get the camera and come back and lay it on the counter. She opens the box to check that everything is there, the camera is now in two pieces. She picks up the two pieces and says, Obviously defective.

By this time, I am holding my breath, I cannot believe this is happening. She tells me I can have the exact same camera or another one of the same value. I want the same camera. She passes me over to another sales person, he checks inventory and tells me that they don't have any more of that camera.

Now, earlier, when I was walking with Sheila and the dogs and told her what had happened the night before, she said, among other things, that I should check the Staples flyer to see what's available on sale. And I did, and my camera was on sale for $20 cheaper than what I paid. So, I mentioned this to the guy, that the camera was in the sale flyer.

He said that sale didn't start until Wednesday (tomorrow), so I said, Then you'll have the camera in stock tomorrow?

He said, Let me just check again. He goes back to check, and sure enough, comes out with the camera. There's one left, he says.

I'll take it, I say.

So we go to the customer service desk to do all the paperwork, he writes out a new warranty and then says, Bring this receipt in tomorrow and we'll give you $20.00.

Excuse me?

You don't have to bring the camera back, just bring the receipt, and we'll give you the sale price, you'll get $20 back.

OK, now I am totally dumbfounded. I was so bummed out over having broken a brand new camera, and now I was getting another new camera to replace it, AND $20!

The thing is, in the past week, I've had one camera break down on me, I broke a second camera, I got two rocks in my windshield one of which is spreading cracks all over the place, and I fell off my bike. I was starting to feel like the universe was out to get me, and what else was going to go wrong? I'll tell you what else was going to go wrong: the kayak was going to fall off the roof rack somewhere in the wilds of New Brunswick and smash to smithereens, the truck was going to break down somewhere on the highway through Quebec and I was going to have to hitchhike to Toronto. I was definitely feeling like the future was starting to look very scary, it's not good to have the universe against you.

And then they give me a new camera and tell me to come back tomorrow for $20. All of a sudden the universe was a wonderfully miraculous place where good things happen and people just walk up to you and hand you cash!

That just made my day.

And maybe the kayak will be safe on the roof rack after all.

Too many holes

I went to Berwick to get my stainless steel nuts and bolts. I also got potatoes for Dobby and broccoli for me. Adding potatoes to his food seems to leave him more satisfied, but he's still scrawny.

The urethaned hull looks very good.




I drilled holes in it for the foot pedals, and then Mike helped me turn the kayak right side up again.

I went home to have a sandwich for lunch, but realized I hadn't taken any bread out of the freezer so I just made some tea and grabbed a handful of smoked almonds. I went back to the Garden House with the intention of drilling holes and spreading urethane on the deck.

Once again a problem that will delay things another day. I drilled the holes for the strapping to hold down the hatch covers and for the deck rigging, but about half way through realized that some of my holes were in the wrong place, they went through the extra layer of reinforcing plywood strips fore and aft of the cockpit, and my bolts are not long enough to go through two layers. So that means I have to make additional holes further away from the cockpit and fill in the ones I made through the reinforcing layers. And that means that I have to delay putting on the urethane until that filler has dried and I've sanded it down, so possibly tomorrow, possibly Wednesday.

I mixed some epoxy to fill those holes and used some of it to install the back rest (the bolt holes have to be lined with epoxy before inserting the bolts) and some to epoxy the bow hole and the foot pedal holes. I would have installed the foot pedals but I didn't have the right kind of screw driver.

I checked my straps with buckles and they are all quite long enough for the job, they are even long enough to double up the straps where they will be bolted to the kayak, but unfortunately the bolts are not long enough to go through two layers of the straps.

I sanded most of the deck, except for around the holes that I filled with fresh epoxy. Tomorrow I will have to clean it up and sand the epoxy to be ready for the urethane. I think it will be OK to urethane over the two tiny holes freshly filled with epoxy.

Mike took the day off work to do some work around the land. Among other things he mowed a large part of the field out front and also the road down to Peter Fader's old cabin. In the evening I biked down there and on my way back I saw the Dog House through the trees. I've never seen it before. There used to be two small cabins in the woods, one was called the Kat Kabin and the other the Dog House. I've seen the Kat Kabin, I've even spent time there when it was occupied. But the Dog House was built after I moved away and I had heard about it but never actually seen it. And for some reason I thought it had been torn down. But apparently not. It was a bit eerie to see it, it's pretty decrepit now.

Dobby has a sore on his shoulder. I think it must be a deer fly bite that he has scratched until it opened. When I first saw it a few days ago it was a raw spot about the size of a nickel. Then yesterday the raw spot was the size of a Toonie and looked quite awful. It was then that I realized he's been making it bigger by scratching it, and I can't do anything to stop him from scratching except yell at him. Now he runs into the bushes when he wants to scratch, he knows I'll yell at him if I see him scratching. In the morning there is a scab on it, but by noon he has it open again.

I am hoping to be done working on the kayak on Wednesday. I don't have quite enough interims, I'm going to add the last two later. They are for a bungie cord across the deck in front of the forward hatch, to slip the paddle under to hold it when not in use. I could leave here on Thursday, but I am going to aim for Sunday now, arriving back in Toronto on Monday night.

Finishing the hull

Since I couldn't get the nuts and bolts I need until Monday, today I thought I'd urethane the hull. To do that I needed to turn the kayak upside down. That was an adventure!










The cradles that the kayak is resting on are movable, the second I lift the kayak off them they flip down into an unusable position. Getting them back up in the proper position means holding kayak in one arm and then reaching over the kayak to flip the cradle arms up into the correct position, without dropping the kayak. And that's just one cradle, then I have to do the other cradle. All I can say is, it's bloody tricky to do! At one point I had one of the cradle arms stuck inside one of the hatch holes, I couldn't move the kayak off of it and the other end of the kayak was in danger of sliding down onto the steel wood stove. I felt like I was about to lose the past two months of work in one fell swoop!

After much sweating and maneouvering I got the kayak upside down on the cradles, more or less stable. I used the sander and 220 grade sand paper to roughen the hull epoxy. Then I cleaned it with vinegar. I probably should have cleaned it first, the hull has been sitting around for eight years and was quite dirty. After I got it pretty clean I opened the can of urethane and spread it on the hull with a 2" bristle brush. It went on very nicely and looked really good. No drips, very shiny. I'm happy with that.

The flower today is chicory, it just bloomed today. I love chicory.

Best laid plans, part 2

This morning I called the store in Berwick and they have the stainless steel bolts I am looking for, so I planned to go to Berwick today.

I told Sheila about my tentative departure date, she laughed and said, Assuming everything goes according to plan! Which it hasn't so far, why would now be any different?

After walking the dogs and cleaning up after breakfast and loading the truck, I left for Berwick just after noon. A very pleasant drive along Highway 221, "The Back Road." And I get to Berwick around 1.00pm to discover that the store is closed, they close at noon on Saturdays!

Now of course that means I won't be able to get the bolts until Monday.

Sheila may be right.

I tried to think of other things I might accomplish on this trip, I stopped in at the Berwick Frenchy's (chain of secondhand clothing shops here) but didn't see anything that appealed. I debated trying the Canadian Tire store on the off chance they had what I wanted, but couldn't face a Saturday afternoon there.

I ended up driving back to Canning and stopping at the building supply store there to enquire about urethane. I bought a litre of spar varnish and some Varsol. The lady there recommended some strips of pipe insulation to use on my tie-downs to keep them from rubbing on the kayak when I put it on the roof rack, so I bought a couple of them too.

Then I stopped at the butcher shop for a bone for Dobby. It's a real old fashioned butcher shop, I half expected to see sawdust on the floor. All the cuts of meat are wrapped in paper, and there was a pile of dogbones on the corner of the big chopping block.

I've thought of a couple of things I could do before Monday, I might be able to start putting urethane on the hull. I think I have to install the foot pedals before the urethane, and they already have stainless steel bolts.

I have stainless steel bolts for the back rest too, but I am not sure whether the washers for them are stainless steel, I may have to wait on that. But I can drill the holes for that and for all the deck rigging.

I think I can cut out all the strapping too, and put the buckles on the straps. Then on Monday I'll go back to Berwick for the bolts, and once they are installed I can urethane the deck.

In theory, that means I'll be done!

When we got home around 2.30pm, I gave Dobby his bone. He loves it!

He's still pretty scrawny, all my efforts to fatten him up are in vain. But, I got an idea to feed him root vegetables, I recall the pet food store lady telling me that potatoes are hypoallergenic for dogs, and that really it is protein that a dog is most likely to react to. So maybe if I fill him up on potatoes and carrots and beets...

I made a root vegetable stew for Dobby this afternoon, he loves it.

In the late afternoon I started drilling holes in the kayak, a half inch hole for the bowline at the bow of the boat, and quarter inch holes in the back rest and thigh braces to attach the back rest to the kayak.













In the evening I cut up the strapping into twelve pieces and attached the buckles to the pieces for six straps, three for each hatch. I used a cigarette lighter to melt the ends of the straps to prevent them from unravelling.

The wrong hardware

The last three days it has been cold enough to have a fire in the morning. Dobby is totally fascinated by the fire, he sits right in front of the stove and stares at it. Once I saw him try to lick the hot stove.





On our dog walk this morning we saw a lot of butterflies. Not sure what kind, they are the same colour as Monarchs, but smaller. There's no milkweed around here so I don't think Monarchs come to this part of the world.

I was planning to drill some holes in the kayak for inserting bolts into. But I discovered that there were no drill bits in the Garden House so I would have to wait until Mike got home to borrow his bits. So again, I didn't really accomplish much, I glued some foam onto the back rest to make it a little more comfy.

When Mike got home I asked about the drill bits, and in the course of the conversation, realized that I had the wrong bolts. Mike had specifically said I needed stainless steel bolts and I hadn't really paid attention to that, I got ordinary metal bolts. He explained that they would rust in the water, I really had to get stainless steel bolts.

How frustrating! I thought I had a day's work left to do and now I have to go shopping for more stuff! Mike thought there might be a store down in Berwick that would have stainless steel bolts. He said Canadian Tire used to carry that stuff but not anymore. He said he had the same problem when he was working on kayaks, as he got closer to finishing it got harder to find the right materials.

We discussed the paint versus clear urethane issue, Mike listened to the arguments for painting but was clearly not impressed. One thing he pointed out was that if I paint then I am totally committed to paint; if I put urethane on I can later change to paint if I want to.

Later in the evening I went through my notes and realized that it has been a month since the last coat of epoxy on the deck, so I can consider putting urethane or paint on now. The coaming was only epoxied a little while ago so that will have to wait.

I've been thinking about when to leave, now that I am so close to being finished. I had hoped to spend some time visiting friends, and maybe taking some trips to Cape Breton and the South Shore. But, if I want to be in B.C. before the end of August, I have to leave here very soon. So tentatively, I am planning to leave either before or immediately after next weekend.

Beach day

I didn't accomplish much on the kayak today.

I put the weatherstripping in the hatches.







I also epoxied small strips of fibreglass along the top and bottom edges of the thigh braces.

That's it!

Sheila and I went down to the beach in the afternoon, Sheila said she could see the reflection of the clouds on the water and wanted to photograph it.

The reflection was faint, but there. I guess the water was glassier and the reflection clearer earlier in the day.

There were cormorants and sea gulls on the rocks, Sheila said she'd not seen them here before.

The dogs played in the water. Moose loves to swim but Dobby and Max are more cautious. However we were able to coax Dobby into the water by throwing stones which he chased.





Once in the water he pawed at the rocks on the bottom, trying to move them into shallower water where he could grab them with his teeth.

Sheila even managed to coax me into the water! I've always said I'd never go into the Bay, it's way too cold. But today I did actually wade up to my knees, it was warm enough for that. So I will modify what I've said before: I'll never swim in the Bay!

Sheila was in deeper and coaxed Dobby to come to her, she said that briefly he was in over his head and swam, but neither of us took our cameras in the water, so we have no pictures of that.

The rock formations on the beach are quite interesting. Most of it is pillow basalt with sensuous curves and a soft look to it.

But some of it was quite deeply etched, Sheila pointed out formations that looked like faces in the rock.




Later in the evening I went down to the beach to see if there was a colourful sunset. Sheila and her daughter were already there but I didn't recognize them from the distance. Sheila recognized Dobby though. The clouds were all massed right where the sunset would have been, so there was no colour to speak of. But Sheila said they were watching a seal swimming back and forth in front of the beach.

Guess what...

...Bought another camera yesterday.

And it was cold enough this morning to light a fire.

Going to Halifax to buy some more kayak stuff.

We laughed we screamed we sang along

Went to see the movie Mamma Mia! Wow! Audience mostly women, all ages, and we laughed, screamed and sang along.

Go see it.

Ideally, with a gang of women.

Best laid plans

Sheila thinks I should buy another camera to replace the broken one, I am seriously considering it. I was going to go into town today to look for a camera, but...

It was raining this morning, but not heavily. Sheila and I walked the dogs. She said that the funnel cloud yesterday set down in New Ross, on the other side of the Valley. Apparently it rained like the dickens there too, but we didn't get the rain until quite late at night. All the weather here comes from the west, and both the Valley and the Bay of Fundy run east-west, so the weather just comes straight up one or the other. It seems like the weather chooses which route to take, the Valley or the Bay, because often I hear on the radio that there's going to be some weather and they get it in the Valley but not here. Then other times there's no mention on the radio and we get hit by whatever has decided to come up the Bay instead of the Valley.

Sheila also said there was an absolutely magnificent sunset last night on the Bay, and there was a rainbow too. She said it was one of the best she's seen yet, she's going to send me pictures and I can post them here if I want. I'm looking forward to seeing that. She tried to post a comment on my blog but it didn't take. Problem with dial-up, things time-out on you and nothing you can do. Apparently some people in the Harbour have high speed, but you have to have a line of sight with Scot's Bay to get it. At the community supper the other night someone said they have a tower in Glenmont now, so if you've got a line of sight on that then you can get high speed that way. Too many trees blocking the lines of sight around here!

Just kidding...

After the walk I went to the Garden House to check the kayak and sand the parts that I epoxied yesterday. Looks not too bad. I could put the weatherstripping into the hatches, but I decided to wait for a dryer day, today is pretty wet.

I headed back to the house on my bike to get ready to go into town. I had one of my walking sticks with me and was holding it in one hand while I cycled. Dobby wanted to play with the stick, jumping at it and biting it, I let him do that. Coming around a corner, he kind of leaned into the stick and pushed me off balance. The bike fell over, I went flying off and into a mud puddle. I just lay there for a half minute, kind of waiting for the pain to subside a bit. Scraped up my hand, my elbow and my knee on the right side. But aside from the scrapes and being covered in mud, I was OK. At the house I washed the scrapes with peroxide and put some tea tree oil on them.

I went over to Mike and Ruth's to use the phone to call around to see where I might find a camera. Nothing really exciting came up, the one store that supposedly has a sale on is closed for renovation. And besides, I was starting to feel kind of wobbly anyway, decided that maybe going on a shopping spree was not the best idea right now. I did talk to Carolyn and we thought we'd go out for dinner so I will go into the Valley, just not right away.

There was a note at Mike's that he couldn't buy any stuff for me yesterday because it was a holiday and the stores were closed. Of course. I forgot about the holiday.

So now I have to plan another trip to the City. :-(

Yesterday Peter was saying that I could get creative with paint, make designs on the kayak. I was thinking about that overnight, thinking about what I could paint. And what colour. Paint does open up some possibilities.

To paint or not to paint

Today I sanded and epoxied. The kayak was still up on its side, I switched it to the other side to get at parts that I could not get at before. Then I put it back right side up to do the epoxying.

I had epoxied the left inside face of the coaming before, this time I epoxied the right inside face. I also added two small strips of fibreglass to the seams between the two top coaming pieces. I sanded as much as I could of the bulkhead epoxy fillets and also any other rough spots I could feel in the cockpit and two hatch areas. I filled a couple of spots along the sheer seam fibreglass strips, where the glass formed small folds that stood up a bit from the wood. I sanded them down as much as I could and then filled them with thickened epoxy.

A picture would be worth a few hundred words ;-), you're getting the words instead.

Mike has gone to pick up Ruth at the airport, he said he wanted to go to Mountain Equipment himself so he could pick up the bits of hardware I still need. Actually, I need some stuff at the Trail Shop too, so if he has time he'll check there.

Peter and his daughter Emily came by to look, Peter said it looked good, almost finished. He expressed the opinion that I should consider painting the kayak rather than leaving it clear. He said paint would hide small imperfections and put the emphasis on the lines of the boat instead of the wood itself. Also, he felt, I would be less anxious paddling a painted boat than a "work of art". He said, If it gets scratched, you're not going to worry, you'll just throw some more paint on it.

He then told a story of losing Nancy's plastic kayak on a lake; by the time they found it (it had floated away off a beach), it was way down the lake upside down and scratched up. But scratches on a plastic kayak are no big deal. Can you imagine that happening to a nice handmade wooden kayak?

His reasoning makes sense to me.

Worked some more on my sticks. The poplar doesn't peel as easily as the other woods do, the bark does not come off in long strips as it does on the maple and willow. So, I cut some spiral lines into the bark and only partially peeled the wood, a long spiral line from top to bottom.

The willow that I peeled yesterday turned bright pink!

The birch has some nice reddish brown markings left from the bark, I could scrape it all off but I kind of like it so I'm leaving it on.

I'd also like to cut some alder and mountain ash to see what that wood is like to work with. Mike suggested spruce, but I'm not so keen on that, too straight I guess.
There was thunder off and on all afternoon. In the evening it sounded more serious, and there was lightning, but no rain. The rain finally came around 10.30pm and it rained quite heavily. Some came in the roof around the chimney, I put a basin there to catch the drips. On the radio they said there were thunderstorms and even a funnel cloud in one part of the province.

Sanding the bulkhead fillets

I managed to get some sanding done on the kayak but it was hard to get motivated to do it. One of the problems is that I am trying to sand down the bulkhead filleting I did last week. After leaving it for a couple of days the epoxy is really hard and tough to sand, I can't use the wood file because there are too many concave curved areas that the file won't fit into. The rear bulkhead is hard to do, the forward bulkhead really tough to do. If I'd known, I'd have positioned the bulkhead an inch or two aft of where it is now, I can reach it from the forward hatch but not quite from the cockpit. An inch closer would make a huge difference!

I wear the respirator, but getting my arm, my head and the respirator inside the forward hatch (which happens to be the smaller one) is next to impossible. I ended up just putting my arm in and feeling my way instead of trying to see what needs to be sanded. But in the cockpit I have to practically climb right inside the kayak to reach, it is very awkward and frustrating. I can sand in one direction but not in the other, and some parts I can't reach at all. Which means I will have to tip the kayak onto its other side to try to reach those spots.

I don't need it to be pretty, but I do need to get rid of any rough edges or points that fabric or vinyl bags could catch on.

Just for something else to do, I thought I'd make a walking stick. Wasn't sure what kind of wood to make it out of, so I cut some branches of birch, willow, poplar and red maple to try them out. The willow, birch and the maple peeled really easily. I gave Dobby the scraps to chew on