Annual WCP Spring Camp Out

If anyone is looking for a relaxed and easy trip, WCP (West Coast Paddler) is having it's annual Spring Camp Out.

It's on April 27th and 28th and it will be at Portland Island. Here is the link to the trip discussion if you are interested. 

Please post if you are going, and also note that there is a potluck one evening.

Here are last year's trip reports and photos.

I should also post the following words by Dan Millsip, the creator of WCP:

IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING THIS CAMPOUT:
YOU are responsible for YOU.
There is no leader on this camping trip.
How you get there is entirely up to you.
The gear you bring is entirely up to you.
This trip IS NOT recommended for novice paddlers -- if you are not or cannot be completely self-sufficient, this trip is probably not for you.

Repairing a foamcore paddle

So I figured that it was probably time to repair my cracked Werner Cypress. I cracked it back in November at Skooks and I nearly took the tip off.

I started by removing the fractured glass and carbon, and I sanded down to the foam. 

Since I wasn't sure what type of foam Werner used, I was a bit nervous that the resin and acetone that I was using would eat away at the foam.

Depending on the foam used, acetone (and polyester resin) can 'dissolve' foam completly. The reaction can be quite dramatic.

(Here's a video that I found on youtube)

... I didn't really want that to happen to my paddle. I ended up removing a small bit of foam and placed it in a bowl of acetone. Nothing happened... so far so good. I picked the foam piece out from the acetone and then placed it in a bowl of resin catalyst. Still nothing. I then did the same with the resin. Again, nothing happened so I figured that it was safe to proceed.

 I don't have any photos of the fiber glassing process, sorry. Above is a photo after the resin cured and after I trimmed the extra carbon. Before I layed the carbon down I placed some loose carbon strands into the area where I had sanded down to the foam. This was to save weight (as the hole would fill up with resin without it) and to keep the surface smooth.

Next I sanded off the extra carbon. Now it's starting to look better....

After some more sanding I decided to add a finish coat of resin.

My other paddle had a small puncture that had been covered with a piece of packing tape. I removed it, sanded, and added a small bit of resin to seal it up. 

The finished paddle.

It's not perfect, and it's not the same weave in the carbon, but it will do :)

The Deer Group

 I just got back from an amazing trip.
A group of us, totaling 6, headed up to the Deer Group for the long weekend. We set up camp on Ross Island and paddled the surrounding islands for three days.

Day one was an overcast and misty day, but it was still amazingly beautiful.

There is something to be said about the west coast of Vancouver Island. The mist, the rocks, and windswept trees... there's nothing like it.

 

One of the amazing things about the Deer Group is the number of sea caves! We came across at least 5-6 in the first day alone. 

One of the group members cut a section of bull kelp and started using it as a horn.
Surprisingly, it created a nice solid note. It didn't take long for the rest of us to create our own.

My first few attempts sounded like a dying whale, but eventually I got the hang of it. 

Blowing the horns in the caves created an eerie echo, and sometimes the waves would crash in return.

This particular cave went back at least 100ft and into complete darkness. It got a bit creepy at times, and you had to be aware of the swell since it got amplified by the cave walls.

Whenever we could (ok, most of the trip), we played around in the swell and did some rock hopping. It was ridiculously fun, even if there was some minor boat damage.  

Photo by Caitlin Schneider

As we were making our way back to camp heavy fog rolled in. It got to a point where the horizon blended with the sea and the boats looked like they were gliding through the air.

The next morning I was (surprisingly) the first one up. I don't think I've ever been woken up by eagles before, but two were calling to each other and I couldn't resist a look. 

It was a breathtakingly beautiful morning.

I wandered around for a bit with a huge smile on my face. I was so happy to be there.

After basking in the glory for a bit, I went over to the boats. While rock hopping the day before I managed to put a small hole in the Illusion's keel. It looked like there was an existing battle scar that had just been gelcoated over...
and of course I hit it in the exact spot. 

Here is the field repair that I did after dinner the night before.

I don't have any photos of the damage before the repair, but the glass and carbon was spongy and had soaked up water. Some water was also leaking into the stern hatch through the delamination.

Since this was just a simple epoxy putty repair, it will have to be repaired properly before the next trip.

For the repair, all I did was: dry the area with a stove, remove the fractured gelcoat, sand to roughen it, clean it with an alcohol wipe and apply the putty.

On the second day we headed south towards the outer islands. The weather was completely different from the day before and it was brilliantly sunny.

On day two we saw (and paddled into) around 6 sea caves.

Photo by Caitlin Schneider

Photo by Caitlin Schneider

During a snack break on the third day we created a fun little game. There were quite a few foam buoys washed up on the beach and we threw them at each other and stabbed them mid air with our PDF knives.

It was quite satisfying.

Photo by Caitlin Schneider

At one point while we were paddling, I noticed a blood star on a rock face. It was quite beautiful.

Photo by Caitlin Schneider

After I passed off the blood star, I found a few new creatures that I'm unfamiliar with and I'm going to have to look them up.

The Illusion, right before I packed her up to return home.

Overall I'm quite impressed with this boat. This trip was its first real test and I'm impressed with its handling. It's much happier loaded than my Avocet lv, but it is still lively and fun.

Yes, 17ft is a lot to rock hop in, but it didn't feel unwieldy and awkward. The amount of rocker and harder the chines make the boat respond quickly when edged. This boat is really edge happy, and that makes me happy :)  

Even though I did some damage to it (a small hole in the keel, some gelcoat lost, and two delamination spots), it wasn't the only one to take a beating. The other boats that were used for playing in the rocks were plastic, but they all had gouges and plastic missing. One even had it's nose squished inwards. 

After spending three days in the Illusion, I did notice some things that I didn't like so much. The seat hurts me! It didn't take long for me to realize that. The boat has a foam seat, but it just doesn't work with my body. By the end of the trip I had a slightly bruised tail bone and a tender lower back. I really need to fix that

I also don't like foot pedals. I had the intention of making a foam foot rest to place on the bulkhead, but I ran out of time. Foot pedals really aren't the most comfortable of things.

The stern hatch was a bit finicky to put on. I ended up getting the hang of it, and it wasn't as bad as the stern hatch of the Delphin on the trip, but it still bugged me. 

A little more work on the Illusion

 As I'm heading to Bamfield for a short trip next weekend, and this is the first (paddling) camping trip this season, I had a few pre-trip things to do.

First of all (and most importantly) I had to do a bit more work on the Sterling Illusion. 

It leaks. After an hour of rolling in the pool it had collected a few cm's of water in the bow hatch. The stern and day hatch however, were completely dry.

I had a hunch that it was the hatch cover. The bow hatch cover is the easiest to put on, and it's made from a different type of plastic compared to the other two.

 
As per Gnarlydog's suggestion, I was going to fill up the hatch with water and flip the boat upside down to see where the water was leaking out from. However, as I finished filling the hatch and went to turn off the garden hose, I noticed some water running into the cockpit.
Aha! The bulkhead also leaks!

I wiggled into the cockpit and noted where it was leaking from (see arrow).

As I still wanted to find out exactly where the hatch was leaking from, I closed the hatch cover and turned the boat over. Hmm… I couldn't see any water dripping from the hatch… but I could hear running water. I had a closer look and then I realized that it wasn't coming from the hatch at all.

 It was coming out of my newly made bow toggle hole. Great.

 When I drilled the hole, I made sure that I was drilling through the end pour... but I failed to notice a small crack in the endpour. This crack was my culprit. 

Above you can see the crack that I missed.

I noticed the crack from inside the hatch (see above), but I didn't see the very small crack in the toggle hole. (You can also see the extensive repair that was done by Sterling in the above photo. The previous owner had an accident with it on his car and Sterling replace the whole bow.)

There was also some delamination on the bulkhead behind the seat. It wasn't leaking, but since I was going to be fiberglassing anyway, I decided to fix it before it turned into something major.

 Here is the finished repair to the bulkhead behind the seat.

 

 And here is the repair to the bulkhead forward of the footpedals.

And here is a photo of the Illusion tied to a tree :)

The simplest solution to the crack in the endpour was to do another endpour on top of the existing one. I plugged the crack with tape and I wedged a chopstick into the hole to keep the resin from leaking out. 

It work out pretty well and I didn't end up with a chopstick fused to my boat :)

Kayak Polo

On Tuesday night Matt and I tried kayak polo for the first time. Friends of ours are part of a local club, and they have invited us to polo numerous times, but last Tuesday we were finally able to make it!

The first half of the night was a practice session and everyone was free to do what they wanted. I ended up helping a lady with her hip flick and then went for a swim as it was quite cold out.

Once it was time for polo, we were divided into two teams and had the rules explained to us. We played a pretty casual and friendly game as there were quite a few new paddlers on the water.

Professional kayak polo is quite an aggressive, full contact sport. We paused the game and preformed a bow rescue in our game :)

It was a ridiculously fun night and I really wished that I took a video to share.

Rolling at the Outdoor Show

Yesterday I was preforming rolling demonstrations at the Outdoor show, and quite honestly, I was nervous before I started. I had the pool to myself, with a mc explaining what I was doing for half an hour. That's a lot of time to keep people entertained.

On the first roll however, I realized two things: (1) I remembered that rolling relaxes me, and (2) the water was bloody freezing! 

I really had nothing to worry about (besides the ice cream headache) and things went pretty smoothly.

I was really excited to have an aerial view of me rolling. I haven't really seen that view before and I thought that it was pretty cool. Flying Cameras is a local company that specializes in RC quadcopters and hexacopters for aerial filming. They had a booth at the show and happily filmed for us.

You will also probably notice that I'm not in my boat.

Ecomarine kindly lent me an Avocet LV so that I didn't have to haul mine in for the show, which is greatly appreciated. 

After my demonstration, there was a hilarious SUP tug-o-war... which involved quite a bit of falling in :)

Overall I had a great time and thank you to everyone who showed up to watch!

See You There!

If you are in the Vancouver area, and looking for something to do this weekend, the Vancouver Outdoor Adventure & Travel Show is on at the Convention Center.

If you do go, make sure to drop by the kayak zone, especially on Saturday between 3:30-4:00 as I will be preforming rolling demonstrations.

Hope to see you there!