It's finished! or day 24

We ended up not going to the boat show. As Donna said, there's no kayak stuff, it's all boats and engines. So we spent a bit of time putting the roof on a flight aviary for the wild lorikeets we rehabilitate, then I got stuck into gooping the deck.

I'd highly recommend you mix small batches of Corey's Goop and take your time applying it. The results will be much better. In hindsight, the hull doesn't look crap, it just has an excess of character. I must admit too, I've never actually seen anyone else's home built skin-on-frame kayak up close, so I don't really know what they're supposed to look like. I've seen plenty of pictures of them, and it's easy to make them look perfect in a photo.

Anyway, here's a few pictures of mine looking pretty close to perfect (although those ribs look pretty wonky).





There's a few drips on the deck from when I did the hull yesterday. I can't help thinking they'd look really cool if I could get someone to paint bear paws around them.



To avoid any more runs, Donna and I sat in the shed for a while and babysat the boat with a Merlot and, in my case, cigar.

These pics were taken by Donna and they're the first ones where there's actually been a person in them to give it a bit of scale.

Looks pretty sleek doesn't it?



The reason for the silly expression in the next photo was, I was trying to decide whether to have the wine up to my lips, or the cigar when Donna took the photo, she caught me doing neither.



Aah! All done. I still have to fit the decklines, but they aren't necessary. Once the goop has dried it's ready for launch. At the moment, that'll be on Wednesday, since Donna is off work then. High tide is around 11am, so I can launch off a nice soft, sandy beach. Actually, at low tide I could launch off a nice, soft muddy beach, but I don't want too much yucky stuff in my new boat just yet.



When I started building the kayak, I'd always put on some shoes to protect my feet. A couple of weeks ago I was looking at some photos online of a kayak building school in Norway. One thing that stood out was the number of people wearing sandles with socks. Apart from the fact you wouldn't be caught dead like that in Australia, you wouldn't be allowed into a class without proper enclosed foot-ware either. After a while though, I got sick of putting shoes on to go and work in the shed, so I did most of the work dressed as I am in the above pictures. I should mention that I did manage to drop something heavy on my big toe a couple of weeks ago that resulted in my second lot of blood-letting during the build.

I think that was another 2 hours today, taking the total to 80 1/2. The deck lines will take about 10 or 15 minutes to fit. If anyone asks, it took me about 80 hours to build, but you could do it in about 60.

The only timing I'm doing now is the countdown to launch.