This spring has been slow in coming. In northern Minnesota, we’re between 14 and 20 days behind median ice out, and it’s wearing a little thin on the nerves. This week some of the bigger lakes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness finally started to go out, so with that in mind, Jeffrey and Michelle Forseth of Sea Kayak Safety and I went to paddle on Brule Lake.

The put-in was completely ice free and it was 50°F, so we figured that we were golden, but as we paddled east along the shore, we started to run into ice and soon ice coated as far as we could see, except for ice leads along the shore. The leads varied in width from wide enough to accommodate all our kayaks to leads just wide enough for one kayak at a time and at points the leads disappeared.

When the leads disappeared, we’d have to power stroke until we hit the ice and then we’d slide over the ice and, hopefully, into water beyond. That usually didn’t happen. Sometimes, the ice would split into two and let us through and sometimes we’d get stuck on a piece of ice and push it around under our kayak until we were free of it.

The ice itself was black ice with honeycombed columns in it. It’s usually easy to push through ice like this because it breaks apart on touch. Most of the ice we encountered was still solid and in places up to a foot thick. We even found some that we could stand up on.

In addition to the ice, we had a light rain which caused an ice fog to rise on the lake. After lunch, the fog was so thick that it was a whiteout. We tried to circumnavigate one of the islands on the lake in the fog only to be turned back when we ran out of leads to follow.

View Larger Map

I have to say that it was one of the most unique paddles that I’ve done. The fog combined with the ice and the many islands of Brule Lake made it feel like we were at a faraway once-in-a-lifetime destination. A paddle like this just proves the old Minnesota proverb true.

“There is no bad weather, only the wrong gear.” -Minnesota Proverb

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Last December, I read a blog post on Rouge Wave Adventures about how to performance tune a new sea kayak (the post contained many great tips, so I suggest you check it out). What I really liked about the post is that it suggested a new technique that solved an actual problem that I’ve experienced and you may have also. The technique was installing non-skid tape, such as Land N Sea Vinyl Traction Tape on a sea kayak to prevent jammed fingers.

When getting out of the kayak’s cockpit, you often put your hands behind you and push on the rear deck to lift your rear. Now and then, when the deck is wet (or slippery from a fresh coat of 303 Protectant), your hands slip. Sometimes it’s inconvenient and sometimes it’s especially painful when your hands slide forward and jam your fingers under or against the cockpit coaming. I always thought it would be great if a kayaking company would texturize the gelcoat behind the cockpit, but it never occurred to me that adding non-skid tape could work just as well.

I decided to give it a go with one of my (too many) sea kayaks for the summer to see how I like it. I used 2-inch non-skid tape which I rounded the corners to make it less likely to peel off than leaving square corners (see the picture).  The tape was easy to apply and molded around the compound curves of the day hatch area without any problems.

When trying new techniques such as this one, I like to evaluated the pros and cons before I actually go test it out and then after 30 days of use, I see how it stacked up to what I thought the pros and cons would be.

Pros

• No more jammed fingers

Cons

• Wear and tear on clothing when demoing and practicing balancing exercises
• The gray looks terrible

If this works out for me, I plan to replace the gray tape with black and cover more of the cockpit recess just to improve the looks. We’ll see how it goes.

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Over the last few months, I’ve been using a couple of Dorcy LED headlamps that they sent to me to review. I’m a bit of a headlamp geek, so I’m always excited when I get a chance to use a new headlamp. But, I’ve settled into using two high-end headlamps that I really like (see The Petzl Zipka Plus vs. the Princeton Tec EOS Headlamp shootout), so I haven’t played around with any new lights lately. High-end headlamps aren’t for everyone and not everyone wants to dish out $40 for a headlamp. Some people would rather spend around $20. The problem with lights at that price is that they’re usually dim and not durable. Dorcy has attempted to make a bright headlamp that runs around $20 ($16 on Amazon: Dorcy 41-2097 Headlight). For this review, I used the headlamps for night photography, for walking to the car before sunrise and after sunsets. I also used one of the headlamps on a week-long kayak trip in the Florida Keys.

The two headlamps that I used were the Dorcy 41-2096 Broad Beam headlight and the 41-2097 Spot Beam headlight. Both headlamps are based on the same body, 3 AAA batteries and an LED light for 12 hours of battery life. The claimed weight is 2.9 ounces, and the broad beam version came in at that weight. The spot beam version weighed 2.8 ounces. Both lights have three brightness modes: full power, half power and strobe. The construction is plastic, and the LED housing is separate from the battery house. The bulb housing rotates allowing you to aim the beam anywhere from straight ahead to straight down at the ground. Dorcy claims that the broad beam puts out 120 lumens and casts its beam 157 feet. They claim the spot beam puts out 134 lumens and casts its beam out 357 feet. The only difference between the two that I could figure out is that there is a plastic diffusion lens over the LED on the broad beam headlamp, and the color of the ring surrounding the LED is different.

In use, I found myself reaching for the 41-2097 Spot Beam more often than the broad beam light, because it was brighter. That said, it’s really bright! Its half-power brightness setting is also really bright. Basically, its settings boil down to super bright and really bright. The strobe flashes very quickly, and while it might get someone’s attention, you’re much better off in buying a PFD-mounted strobe specifically designed for signaling help in an emergency and one that can be seen from at least a mile away, such as the ACR Firefly Plus. Just to testify how bright this light is: when camping in the Keys, on one occasion while eating dinner under a tarp at night, I took the light off and pointed it towards the tarp. It lit up the area well enough for all of us to see and even read by. It’s bright.

While I don’t think that I really put this light through the amount of usage my other lights have seen, it held up fine over the week-long trip in the Keys. Compared to high-end headlamps, it feels a little flimsy. The plastic battery cover and hinge feels particularly so. While I haven’t used many headlamp entries in this sub-$20 category, I suspect that the Dorcy stacks up well against the competition.

My biggest problem with the headlamp is the battery life. It’s claimed to last only 12 hours and that’s about what I experienced. Compared to other LED headlamps, I found the 12 hours of battery life too short. For example, albeit for twice the price, Princeton Tec Remix Headlamp gets 200 hours of battery life, weighs the same and kicks out 100 lumens. Still, the Dorcy has a $16 street price and that’s hard to beat.

So, in the end, for the price the Dorcy seems like a nice light. It won’t replace high-end lights for me, but if my nieces were coming up for a kayaking or canoe trip, I’d be more likely to buy a $16 headlamp instead of a $30 headlamp, and it has perfectly fine battery life for a five day trip.

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The Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys connects the Middle Keys to the Lower Keys. Under the bridge, the water is shallow, and it seems like the 1,000 square miles of the Florida Bay flows through the opening on the tide generating up to 4 knot currents. In a kayak, the current is swift enough to push you out to sea on an ebb tide or into the bay on flood. The common practice in a situation such as this is to find a ferry angle that prevents you from drifting out to sea and this is also a common practice with preventing leeway in cross winds. This is commonly taught as the correct practice, but is it always the correct practice? Not according to John Winters, a naval architect and canoe and kayak designer, if efficiency is the goal.

I had an opportunity to experience the differences between two approaches to currents on a kayaking trip in the Keys.

Ferry Angles

You use a ferry angles to maintain a course when currents or winds would push you off that course. It is the angle between your course and your heading and is set so that you paddle into the wind or current at just the right angle to maintain your course while making headway. You can set a ferry angle by calculating the exact angle based on your paddling speed and the current’s speed. There’s a great explanation on how to do this in John Lull’s Sea Kayaking Safety & Rescue: From Mild to Wild Conditons, the Essential Guide for Beginners Through Experts or in David Burch’s Fundamentals of Kayak Navigation, 4th. Knowing how to calculate the ferry angle is helpful for when you can’t find a range, such as in the fog, in the dark, or on long crossings, but finding a range makes setting the ferry angle simpler.

To set a ferry angle with a range, just paddle at an angle and adjust that angle so that the two points in your range stay aligned. As long as the points are aligned, you maintain your course. As your angle increases, you’ll need to increase for forward speed to maintain a decent speed along the course. Ferry angles larger than 40 degrees are very inefficient and waste lots of energy for little progress towards your destination. Even at 40 degrees if you’re paddling at 4 knots, your speed made good towards your destination drops to around 3 knots.

Ignoring the Current or Wind

Instead of setting a ferry angle across the current or wind, you could just keep the bow of your kayak or canoe pointed towards your destination and adjust your heading to keep pointing at the destination as you paddle forward. You’ll experience leeway movement and your final course will look curved. According to John Winters,

From a pure efficiency standpoint … [this] method works best since you will constantly change course to adjust to conditions and maximize performance. This is good because conditions are always variable. The other positive aspect of paddling towards your destination is that you can ignore minor course variation and focus on the “big picture”. Most people steer too much believing that steering a straight course is best when the more efficient technique is to let the boat wander a bit to suit the vagaries of wind and waves. Few people do this instinctively.

He later adds,

The reason [that this method is more efficient] is that the boat is traveling more efficiently through the water. Because the boat is traveling faster it has greater course stability and you can more easily adjust for varying conditions. For example, you will need to correct your course less. The other nice thing is that it is a self correcting course and you need not calculate a proper drift angle which, if your crossing is long, could be wrong.

So, Which is the Best Way?

During my experience paddling past the Seven Mile Bridge, my friend Amy and I choose to use ferry angles and a little drift to make our way to an island we were planning to camp on. My friend Dave ignored the current and paddled directly towards the island adjusting his course as needed. All three of us typically paddle at approximately that same speed. The way it worked out was that Amy and I paddled in flat calm water, but Dave was pushed out of the shallows and into an area where the light chop was interacting with the current creating about a foot or so of white-capping chop. Despite the chop and the leeway, Dave beat us to the island. In this instance, his approach worked best for speed.

It’s not always going to be that way, particularly in current, but according to John Winters, the second approach “works best most of the time [in wind] due to the high leeway of shallow boats.”

So, why didn’t the kayaker cross the road? He couldn’t figure out the ferry angle.

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When I think of Sanborn Canoe Company, I think of handcrafted paddles steeped in the heritage of Minnesota’s canoe country. Their paddles take the names of some of the most scenic lakes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, America’s most used and loved wilderness area. And the owners are the same guys breaking their backs making the paddles. They’re the real deal that love paddling so much that they were willing to sacrifice steady 9-5 jobs to build paddles that can be trusted on long canoe trips.

As far as the paddles that they make, they do both bent shaft paddles with modern shapes and traditional paddles. They also offer unique painted paddles that not only have the perfect balance right at the paddle’s throat, but also perform great on the water. They look so great though that you’ll want to hang them on the wall as art. I can see painted paddles becoming the centerpiece of many northwoods cabins.

Sanborn Canoe Company has been a long-term supporter of PaddlingLight, and I’ve been following their progress from a small garage-based operation to one that built a wood shop for making the paddles. I’ve always wondered what a wood shop for a paddle-making company would look like, so I ask Sanborn to take a bunch of pictures for me. Not only is their shop functional, but it’s filled with small details that tell you that this is the real deal. This is the shop of people who love their work, love the heritage that they’re building on and most importantly love canoeing.

It will be fun to watch Sanborn grow. Check out their website here: Sanborn Canoe Company

I asked Zak at Sanborn Canoe Company to give me a short verbal tour of what they do. This is what he wrote back:

Minutes south of Winona, Minnesota, along highway 61, you will find yourself at the entrance to one of the many valleys fingering out from the Mississippi river. Winding back into stark green countryside is Little Tout Valley Road. And this road, that is flanked by luscious apple orchards, brimming trout streams and picturesque farm fields, leads to our corner of this green earth. Our wood shop is set in the middle of a grassy field and flanked by forest and rolling bluffs.

At Sanborn Canoe Co., we are proud to handle all aspects of paddle crafting, in house. The only thing we don’t do is the cutting down of trees and milling of the lumber. All gluing, shaping, finishing and painting is done in our little shop. Each paddle is crafted by one of our craftsman from start to finish, and is branded with the craftsman’s mark. It’s a craftsman’s pride that every Sanborn paddle is a unique work of art; we get to know each paddle that passes through our hands. And each has slight differences to the one crafted before it.

The Sanborn shop is a place, not only to make paddles, but to indulge our many passions. It’s where we dream up new paddle designs, plan our numerous canoe adventures and find inspiration for new projects. It’s where we first began crafting our wooden bucksaws and honed our painting skills, employed on our Artisan paddles. On every shelf and in every corner you’ll find old tools and new tools of the paddlemaking craft, little camp kit items, maps of our past and future adventures, bows and arrows, gardening supplies, fishing tackle, large chunks of hickory awaiting some new project, rows of walnut cut into blades shapes, lots and lots of cedar cut to various lengths and thicknesses, racks of finished paddles and many other items that kindle our creative fire.

Over the winter, I asked Sanborn Canoe Company to paint a custom design on a paddle for me. I always like the colors of the U.S. Revolutionary War blue coats, so I worked with Zak to come up with a design that featured the red, white and blue of the revolutionary war uniforms in a design that sort of looked like the front of the coat. Here are a few pictures of the painting of my paddle. I have the paddle and it’s awesome. Pictures of the paddle will be in a future post.

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See that island in the distance? The one surrounded by mangroves. Unlike other mangrove islands, the center of this one was all sand instead of clay. It also had a sandy beach that faced north with a view to the distant Seven-Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys and a view towards the setting sun. With the tide out, the beach extended about 100 feet. For sunrise, tidal pools formed in old coral reefs or limestone bedrock. The center of the island raised far above the tide. The open nature of the island meant that the breeze would help keep the no-see-ums away after the sun went down. It seemed like the perfect place to land.

Then we landed and found this:

Earlier in the day, a group of motor boaters boated out to the island and had a picnic. Instead of bagging their trash, they left it all on the beach. It was starting to blow around the island. Worse still is that sea turtles often confuse plastic for food and sea turtles often die from ingestion of plastic. We didn’t have trash bags with us, nor the room in our kayaks so it was a dilemma. We tried to decide if we were going to stay on the island or go to a larger key back to the east which was typical with a clay center and a ring of mangroves. Finally, we decided to stay. (Seriously, motor boaters? You couldn’t clean up your picnic? I usually don’t get too upset, but this one was hard to believe. This is why we can’t have nice stuff.)

And then we found this:

Unburied crap back from the beach. Now, when we take a crap in the woods we all feel like Bill Bryson did when he wrote, “I wanted a little of that swagger that comes with being able to gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly sniff, ‘Yeah, I’ve shit in the woods.’” But, you don’t leave it like this and arguably on a small island such as this, it’s better to bag it and pack it out.

Seriously, who does this? There’s even a book written about How to Shit in the Woods. Not only does it contain great info about crapping in the woods, but it also makes a great gift for your paddling friends. It’s not the first time that I’ve seen this nor do I imagine that it’s the first time that you’ve seen it. I often see it near beaches that have easy access for motor boaters. Maybe, boat stores, boat manufacturers, etc. need to start a campaign on how to shit in the woods. They can start with the book. Here’s the link again if you missed it:

• How to Shit in the Woods, 3rd Edition: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art

Leave No Trace Principles

If you read this website, I suspect that you already practice Leave No Trace principles, but if you don’t, here are the seven principles:

• Plan Ahead and Prepare
• Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
• Dispose of Waste Properly
• Leave What You Find
• Minimize Campfire Impacts
• Respect Wildlife
• Be Considerate of Other Visitors

Here’s the gist of how to poop in the woods:

1. Pick a spot about 150 feet away from any fresh water and out of the flood plane.
2. Dig a hole that’s 6 to 8 inches deep. If you can preserve the top few inches of the soil in one piece like a piece of sod, do so.
3. Do your duty.
4. Wipe.
5. Burn the TP.
6. Stir some dirt from the sides of the hole in with the poop. Find a stir stick on the way to the hole.
7. Fill in the hole and cover it with the sod you made.
8. Sanitize or wash your hands. The most common contamination in the woods is from not washing your hands after you poop.

What should you carry in your shit kit?

1. A trowel: I’m old school and use a Coghlan’s Backpackers Trowel that I’ve had forever. It’s exactly 6 inches long.
2. TP
3. A lighter
4. Hand sanitizer
5. Dry bag: a lightweight dry bag such as Sea to Summit Lightweight Dry Sack in the two liter size to keep the tp dry. Or a Sea to Summit Ultra Sil Outhouse.

On our trip, we were so disgusted about the lack of sanitation on the island that we packed up our stuff and paddled back to an island to the east. It was clean. It looked like it had been used for camping, but not by motor boaters, which is probably why it was clean.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Unattempt to Circumnavigate the World by Kayak Suspended

Grand Marais, Minnesota (April 1, 2013) — Today expedition paddler Bryan Hansel indefinately suspended his attempt to attempt a never before attempted kayaking route in the pursuit of becoming the first person in the world to circumnavigate the world by kayak. He was attempting the solo expedition to bring attention to the slowest growing religion in the world, The Church of the Latter-Day Dude.

The expedition was set to start on the Great Lakes, travel to England via Greenland and Iceland. Then journey to the Mediterranean Sea to the Suez Channel and around India, with a short jaunt below the equator just to satisfy critics. From there it was to go along Japan, to Alaska to the Panama Canal into the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi River. A 6-mile portage would bring the expedition back into the Great Lakes watershed.

When the expedition was announced, Hansel said, “It’s important to me to attempt the most difficult and unlikely sea kayaking expedition ever conceived in the history of mankind. And, tack on some unrelated cause to help raise money.”

With the expedition set to go, Hansel was packing is kayak and learned that the rug wouldn’t fit within the hatches, and without the rug there would be nothing to tie the campsite together. Hansel, an ordained Dudeist Priest, quoted from The Dude De Ching, “The rug is only a fabrication which ties the room together.”

Hansel has no plans to unattempt this journey again.

Hansel times three.

Hansel owns a kayak guiding company called North Shore Expeditions based in Grand Marais, Minn. He offers Lake Superior kayaking trips and Grand Marais kayaking trips. He has kayaked the entire American shorelines of Lake Superior and Lake Huron and has paddled as far away from the Midwest as the Lofoten Islands in Norway.

The Church of the Latter-Day Dude (Dudeism) is the world’s slowest-growing religion. It’s an ancient philosophy that “preaches non-preachiness, practices as little as possible…” Hansel has been an ordained Dudeist Priest since 2009.

The expedition is sponsored by these generous companies: The Bank of the Global World, Big Water Kayaks, Groovy Paddles, Around Ankles Kayak Skirts, and many individual donations from generous supporters.

Contact:

John “The Kayaker” Smith, PaddlingLight.com

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Today, the award-winning film Ikkatsu: The Roadless Coast available for viewing to the public. This is about a kayaking trip that documented the Japanese Tsunami debris along the Washington coast. Here’s the blurb from the movie:

In March of 2011 Japan suffered a devastating earthquake followed by a series of equally devastating tsunamis. As the waters receded, an estimated 1.5 million tons of debris was washed back into the Pacific – all of which was destined to land on distant shores.

In the summer of 2012 three professional kayakers, supported by a staff of mainstream scientists started an unprecedented journey; paddle the roadless coast of Washington to survey the debris on some of the wildest shoreline and ultimately to bring back their data for the scientific community.

This award-winning film documents their journey (Winner Best Environmental Film, Waterwalker Film Festival 2013; World Tour Reel Paddling Film Festival 2013)

The online link to the movie: https://vimeo.com/52769782

The movie:

Ikkatsu: The Roadless Coast from Steve Weileman on Vimeo.

They also have a crowd-funding project currently underway to help with the coast of our second survey expedition to Augustine Island in Alaska. We roll our kayaks aboard the M/V Kennicott on June 22^nd to start a 6 day journey to Homer. From there we’ll be in the field doing our surveys for a month.

Help fund the project here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/secrets-of-augustine

The following link has project details: http://ikkatsuproject.org/projects/the-secrets-of-augustine/

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If you own an older NDK (Nigel Dennis Kayaks), now called Sea Kayaking UK, you’ve probably experienced a broken seat. The older seats were fiberglassed into the kayak under the deck and that fiberglass would eventually tear away. The standard replacement was a foam seat, but now you can install a NDK high performance seat yourself. It takes about 2 hours to install a high performance seat, although it can take much less time if you’re used to repairing kayaks. Even if you don’t need to replace your old seat, you may want to consider a new seat, because they’re much more comfortable and the built-in back band is great.

The Sea Kayaking UK (NDK) high performance seat is a fiberglass seat that hangs from the side of the cockpit instead of the underside of the deck, so there should be less stress on the joint, which in theory should help prevent failure. The older seats also often caused a pinch between the back band and the seat (See: Make your NDK/SKUK Seat Comfy), but the new NDK high performance seat features a built in foam and fiberglass back, which assuming you’re physically fit and used to kayaking, provides enough support that you could paddle without a back band. When you order a replacement kit, it comes with the seat, an installed back band, a foam block for each hip and a foam pillar to use as a replacement back band. It doesn’t include glue or instructions.

NOTE: If ordering this in the U.S., plan ahead as very few replacement kits make it into the states. My seat missed the boat (literally) by a few days, so to get it on time Nigel Dennis, himself, flew it over the pond on his way to Canoecopia. Thanks, Nigel!

Required Equipment

• Seat w/ adjustable plastic side parts, four bolts (comes with the kit)
• Back band or foam pillar (comes with the kit)
• Foam seat pad
• Allen keys
• Tape measure
• Weights (or sand bag)
• Marker
• Gloves: use when using acetone and the glue
• Respirator: wear when using acetone or when using methacrylate adhesive
• Rags
• Mixing sticks (popsicle sticks)
• Acetone
• Plexus MA300 glue or methacrylate SS 605 glue (NDK’s specification): This is hard to find retail in the states. I found Plexus at James, but in bulk sizes and without the calk gun. I found Devcon Plastic Welder in town for $7, but you can pick it up on Amazon for less. Devcon Plastic Welder is methacrylate adhesive, but I couldn’t tell if it was the exact specification that NDK listed.
• 60-grit sandpaper

Optional Equipment

• Tape
• Rope

Seats for Installing a NDK High Performance Seat

1. You need to get the current seat out. If it’s a fiberglass seat, good luck! To get the side that isn’t broken out, you need to cut and sand. Be careful not to pull on it, because you could crack the gelcoat. Once out, clean up the joint with sandpaper. If the seat is foam, you can use Homax Goo Gone to help remove left over foam and contact cement.
2. The kit I received was assembled, but if it’s not, then assemble the seat so that the adjustable side parts sandwich the nylon for the back band. I taped the back of the bolts so that no adhesive would get into them.
3. Place the seat into the cockpit. NDK says to place the foam seat pad first, but I found aligning the seat was easier by putting the seat in first.
4. Align the seat so that the back is 2 inches from the bulkhead, unless the kayak is a Pilgrim, which requires a different distance.
5. Center the seat in the cockpit by finding the lowest part of the hull. I used my finger to feel the lowest spot.
6. Now align the seat so that it’s perpendicular to the center line of the kayak. This is much harder than it seems. In my case, my cockpit coaming was put in off center and at a slight angle, so I couldn’t use the cockpit coaming center point to align the seat. I ran a rope from the front of the kayak which I centered and held in place with tape at the bow. I used the rope to measure the distance from the bow to each bolt. I moved the seat until each bolt was an equal distance from the bow. I then did the same from the stern. I allow measured off of the bulkhead and tried to find the center of the deck in front of the cockpit coaming and measured off of that one.
7. Once satisfied with the placement, use a marker to mark where the adjustable side pieces contact the hull. Also, outline the front of the seat with marker.
8. Remove the seat.
9. Place the foam seat pad into the kayak. Keep the adhesive backing on the pad until you decide exactly where it should go. NDK recommends placing it forward of the fiberglass seat, so the edge of the seat rests on the foam instead of directly on the glass hull. They recommend 30mm, so about an inch forward of the outline you made.
10. Mark around the foam pad in a way that will make it easy for you to find the placement.
11. Peel the backing off and stick the foam seat pad into the cockpit.
12. With 60-grit sandpaper sand the area where you will glue the adjustable side pieces to the hull.
13. Clean the sanding with acetone. Acetone will remove your marker lines, so be careful as you clean.
14. Place the seat into the kayak aligned with your marks.
15. Place weights onto the seat, so that it doesn’t move around during gluing.
16. Mix up the methacrylate on a piece of cardboard. The plastic packaging that came with the glue worked as a mixing board for me.
17. Pull the seat away from the side of the hull and smear the glue onto the back of the adjustable side pieces. You really need to pull with some force to get the seat to come away from the hull. Repeat it on the other side. The pressure from the seat will squeeze out some of the glue. In places, you might have gaps, but methacrylate has gap filling properties, so it will fill small gaps of a millimeter or two. If your gap is larger, you need to figure out how to close it by applying pressure from one side.
18. Wipe up the excess glue with a clean cloth. Don’t use your acetone cloth, because acetone could penetrate the glue and make the bond weaker.
19. Glance one last time to make sure everything is in alignment.
20. Wait 15 minutes and the glue should set.
21. Stick the foam hip pads into the slots on the seat. The pads come with flat bottoms, so I cut an angle to make it fit perfectly instead of a factory fit.
22. Wait for the glue to fully cure according to the instructions. Usually 24 hours.
23. Paddle.
24. You can replace the back band with the foam pillar if you don’t like the back band or feel like you don’t need it. If you remove the back band, make sure to add a stainless washer before threading the screw. If you don’t, it could be too long and push into the hull cracking the gelcoat. It happened to me.

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I’d like to announce a new advertiser on PaddlingLight.com. Today, we added Solo Stove, a wood-burning backpacking stove that can also be used with alcohol burners as a backup. The Solo Stove boils a quart of water in about eight to ten minutes using sticks, twigs, pine cones or other burnable items. It weighs 9 ounces and fits inside a 4.5 inch by 4.7 inch pot. Both the pot and stove weigh just over a pound when taken together. This is only an ounce heavier than a PocketRocket stove setup (without the fuel) and it comes close to a popcan stove setup if you include the fuel for the popcan. On longer trips, the Solo Stove offers significant weight savings in fuel vs. both systems. Only in the last few days of the trip does a popcan setup win out. This seems like the perfect little stove to carry either as an emergency stove on day trips or as a primary stove on longer kayak and canoe camping trips.

The Solo Stove is similar to the Bushbuddy, which we reviewed before (Bushbuddy Stove Review), but there are differences that I think are significant. Both primary differences deal with construction. First, the Solo Stove is constructed from a thicker stainless steel, which makes it more durable while only weighing 2.5 ounces more. Second, the Solo Stove simplifies construction by using fewer parts, which translates to fewer welds, approximately 200 in the Bushbuddy and 20 in the Solo Stove. Fewer welds means fewer possible failure points. A third difference may seem minor, but the Solo Stove uses a three vs. four prong system for supporting your pot. The three prong system helps eliminate pot wobble and makes for a more solid cooking platform.

Solo Stove Demonstration Video

This video demonstrates the basics of using a lightweight wood-burning stove.

Solo Stove Specifications

Fast to boil: 8-10 minutes to boil 32 fl oz of water
Fuel: Burns sticks, twigs, pine cones and other biomass
Packed size: Height 3.8 inches, Width 4.25 inches
Assembled size: Height 5.7 inches, Width 4.25 inches
Weight: 9 oz
Materials: Hardened 304 stainless steel, nichrome wire

Price: $89.99 (as of 3/13/13 it was on sale for $69.99)

More info: Solo Stove

The post Solo Stove: a Lightweight Cooking Solution appeared first on PaddlingLight.com. You can leave a comment by clicking here: Solo Stove: a Lightweight Cooking Solution.