WFR

Oil and Water, Again

January 4, 2018 Comments (0) journal

Messing About in Boats

Sort of a strange moment today, a brief few minutes where it seems like the circle is completed and a new perspective is realized.

I went and picked up the Hyas yiém down at the Foss Seaport this morning. The exhibit that it was a part of has been down for several months now… not sure how I managed to put off the pickup for this long. It has been a while since I have seen it, since I’ve had to move it around. It’s a big boat, seems even bigger now, somehow. It’s not light and it’s no speedster, but it got the job done and it’s been a pleasure to paddle, in its own way.IMG_4589

That boat just had to float. There was no requirement for the Hyas yiém to be in any given place at a particular time over the course of the entire Puget Sound voyage; I was content to time my schedule around the currents and didn’t look to cover specific miles in a day. Very much all about the journey rather than the destination.

Times change.

I never gave any thought to making another “statement kayak,” but now I find myself in it once more, making a new boat out of plastic. Foamed plastic, this time, actual chunks of marine debris collected on the beaches of Puget Sound. I’m making it for a race, at least that’s the idea… but I have to say up front that I am not completely confident at this point, and it very well may turn out that this particular idea might not actually work. It’s foam, and sort of brittle foam, at that. We’ll see.

IMG_4587So far, so good, as far as the design and build has gone, however. It’s coming together pretty quickly and I expect to have it shaped and ready to be covered by the end of the month. The Basura del Mar needs to be able to cover 70 miles of Puget Sound waterways at a decent pace, as opposed to how I did it in the Hyas yiém. (I took 13 or 14 days to go about 150 miles; this project calls for me to cover half that distance in less than 2 days. That right there is a good comparison.)

More on all of this later, obviously. Obviously.