First test paddle

Pretty much the last thing to do before we could take them out on the water was to put on all the padeyes, hatch straps, and deck lines. Kelly finished up doing that on her boat on Friday evening and we took them out for a test paddle!














The misgivings I had about the keel being straight disappeared and Kelly's hard work on realigning hers paid off. They look great outside despite all of the small (and not so small) imperfections in the end result. I could tell the fatty harbor seals who followed us around huffing out their noses appreciated the natural wood finish on the boats. The Grebes who made strange video-game-esque calls and dodged out of the way of our bows were probably thinking: damn, that's a good looking boat. I rolled mine with relative ease, I am still deciding whether or not to install the keyhole knee braces. Either way I definitely need to put some foam where my knees contact the boat. We also still need to install rudders sometime before June.



Probably the largest step in our journey to paddle the inside passage is now complete. We have also planned our route, ordered charts, accumulated pretty much all the gear we need and even bought our tickets to Glacier Bay (we leave from Bellingham on June 17th). All that is left really is planning and buying our food and resupplies.