No plans wknd update.

Stated I wasn’t filing any plans with the tower on friday and plans were not made. Only intent was to keep my head out of the political winds and societal/tribal/familial hailstorms.

Its now Sunday and my inner core is much more relaxed.

Started off yesterday playing with machine tools and cutting on acrylic to make a set of tube clamps for disassembly of the Feathercraft Yak. Those tubes are solidly glued together after a decade or more of being as one. The lubricant, water, whatever was in the water and time have bonded them quite well.

Here’s a view of my end product.

Now I need to come up with a spreader bar/clamp. What I had intended on using was a furniture clamp, but the way they are set up, I can’t reverse the action.

I’ll come up with something.

Dismal gloomy cloud covered weekend in part to high humidity, another part being a monster dust cloud from a far away desert. Hot, muggy, dim lighting: perfect time to head to a spot I’ve been wanting to check out. I’ve been holding off because it tends to be crowded by the time I would make it there. Its a 2 1/2 hour drive for me.

Make the drive, enjoying the backroad views through Dan’l Boone national forest, short stop at Cumberland Falls, and an hour later I’m at the boat ramp and my guess is proven correct! Very few people and I am able to park close to the water.

While putting in another group is shuttled in; a small group of ‘renters’. Its not derogatory, I tell people interested or curious, to find an outfitter to rent from and try different types of boats. The type I use are not for the weekender ‘hit the water once a year’ types.

Side note: the outfitter in this case should be beaten with a broken paddle. They put a very obese man in a Jackson Zen white water yak. The man had to be pushing +300# and the Zen is rated for 280 max. In the water, it was showing almost zero freeboard, the back deck completely awash, and no skirt to keep water out. The Zen does not have floatation installed, float bags have to be added and from what I saw, were not in this case. The guy in the yak was a complete moron too. Had his PFD tied to the back deck and it was trailing along behind him as he see-sawed his way across the water. One decent wave and this guy was going to be fighting to save a boat, his life and figuring out how to get that PFD into play. Maybe it wasnt the outfitter, but the guy wanting to try a ‘playboat’ (which the Zen is not), dunno. But I saw the setup and my jaw dropped. Imagine seeing a bowl afloat in a pool, its floating with just a bit of its rim above the surface. Now make a splash! The ripple overcomes the rim, the bowl fills the rest of the way and , BLOOP!, down she goes.

That’s what I saw happening here. A polyethylene boat will float, but not much and it will not support any other weight if its flooded. My Perception Carolina has two bulkheads installed to create a pair of chambers to keep the boat afloat in event of capsize and cockpit flooding. They do the job but a cockpit full of water equals sitting in a 50 gallon barrel of water. You aren’t moving fast or well. The chambers are there to keep you up so you can pump that water out or get to a safer spot and dump.

But I digress,,,

Spent a couple hours noodling around. Some waves in the main channel, but not enough to make me sweat, nor enough to sink dummy-yakker mentioned earlier. Warm air and water, with a humidity factor just a couple points below needing scuba gear above water; its hot.

Then I arrived here,,,

Temp is 20° cooler. Cool enough that the deck camera fogged up inside its case 😁. Felt fabulous! Peaceful with the water splashing and far enough off the main channel so no boat noises can be heard.

Then the renters showed up. Ah-well. Was good while it lasted. Lol.

I have over an hour of (stupendously boring) footage from my deck cam. Minus about 10 minutes where the lense was fogged bad enough that ya can’t see squat. But uploading lt is not happening, mostly because it is flat boring. I may edit out the ‘boring!’ and keep the splashy parts; that would cut it to about 2 minutes. Lol.

But today is a “work” day for me. I’m online with Kindle Publishing and just hit the PUBLISH button. Now I get to kick back and wait the 72 hour review process and hope a bunch of pencil necked Karens reviewers pass my efforts along to the rest of the world.

Fingers crossed,

If it passes review, it will be available in Kindle immediately after. I will be setting up a free download period for 30 days but I can’t set any of that up until is Okayed. (Sadly, they won’t let me ‘give it away’, and by publishing with them, I am forbidden from doing so on this blog,,) $2.99 for kindle, the deadtree version will be $9.99. Its pricier than my last one, but three times the page count, and far more entertaining than my last effort.(and with printing costs and publisher fees, my take on deadtree is $.60/book at that price. Seriously! )

See how ‘not filing a flight plan’ makes me more efficient? Seat of the pants, baby! (And I paddle better when its that way too!!!! Innuendo maybe intended there ROFL)