Intents and Purposes

There are many excellent sites devoted to kayak building, some commercial, some personal. As a beginning builder, nearing the completion of my first "strip built" boat and already dreaming about the second, there is little of value I can add about the techniques of building with wood strips that have not been better stated, explained and illustrated elsewhere. Check out the bulletin board maintained by Nick Schade of Guillemot Kayaks at http://www.kayakforum.com/cgi-bin/Building/index.cgi for a wealth of information and support, or browse any of the sites maintained by various designers, among them Jay Babina's Outer Island Kayak at http://www.outer-island.com/index.html, Nick Schade's Guillemot Kayaks at http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/, Rob Mack's Laughing Loon Kayaks at http://www.laughingloon.com/, Joe Greenley's Redfish Kayaks at http://www.redfishkayak.com/index.htm, Vaclav Stejskal's One Ocean Kayaks at http://www.oneoceankayaks.com/, or Bjorn Thomassen's designs at http://www.thomassondesign.com/edoc/echoose.php. Add to these the countless web sites maintained by individual builders around the world.

Instead I propose to reconstruct a record of my interest in sea kayaking, a record of challenges and accomplishments, of new travels and new friends, of finding skills and abilities I didn't know I had. Unlike a website, blogs seem to promote a journal format. I am writing this journal for myself, and for my friends and family.....any others who may enjoy it are certainly welcome to take from it what they may.