Outfitting

Due to the "furlough", I'm already outfitting the kayak, and it isn't even April yet.
It occurred to me today, that I am much too used to doing things "fast", and that I now have plenty of time for details and do-overs.

I decided to actually do the drill/fill/re-drill thing on the holes in the deck. In the past, I had drilled the holes to size, epoxied the hole, and put the bolt through. On the Outer Island, I can see dark spots where water penetrated the wood. This time, I actually drilled the hole oversize, filled the  hole with epoxy, and drilled to size. When I drilled, I got only epoxy chips, so I'm thinking that it works better this way.
I decided that hatch the rim needs more sanding, and another coat of paint.

Skeg control. I had almost forgotten how tedious it is to put this together. I neglected to prevent epoxy & varnish from going into the holes, so spent quite a while reaming them out. Something didn't quite jibe regarding the length of the inner tube, and the travel of the cable necessary  to make the skeg go up & down-the inner tube popped out of the outer tube when the skeg was all the way down. I think it may be because this skeg is smaller than the design size. The little black gizmo on the right stops the knob from going down all the way and pulling the inner tube out. All this makes much more sense in practice than in print 😀

I decided on a new way of doing the deck rigging, besides the usual criss-cross pattern. I figured that all I really use the rigging for is to hold my wet bag & pump, and these will do the job. I got the through-deck plugs online. The bungee cord is simply knotted under the deck.

The backband was saved from the kayak that I donated to charity two years ago. I also saved the seat,  which with an adjustment to the width, worked out fine. The side braces seemed to have come out angled inward a little, which seems strange since I leveled the kayak and plumbed the braces. Made some fancy angle cuts on the table saw.