Epoxy work and Kayak adventures

Today was mostly dry, after starting wet when the forecast said it would be dry.

However, once the rain stopped we were able to take the aft solar back down and work on the "kink" in the support arms. These "kinks" perform magic by taking the support legs around the stern of the boat when we bring them into their storage position and by keeping the panels higher when they are deployed behind the boat. You can see how they work in this video.

We had already upgraded from the scraps joining the timbers to neat plywood triangles. However, today we went two steps further.

• We neatly cut out triangles within the triangles to reduce weight and windage.
• We removed the triangles one at a time, coated the inside surfaces with epoxy and then glued and screwed them back on.

This is what they look like now 😄

There is a bit more epoxy work to do on the outside of them before we paint them.

The next big step is to design, build, epoxy coat and paint parts to replace the two temporary fixed supports for the solar tray when in deployed mode. At the moment the test version looks like this (you can see the solar "tray" on the ground, it too still needs a bit of finishing):

We are still figuring out how to do this ;-)

By the time we had finished the epoxy work and carried all the tools back up onto the boat it was too late to start another big task.

So we decided to go out for a paddle in our inflatable kayak (it is a "proper" high spec white water capable one, not a toy). At this point it was nearly high tide but the current was still flowing fast in a South Westerly direction which happened to be where the wind (over 20mph) was coming from. So a classic wind over tide meant lots of white horses and quite big waves.

Therefore, we decided to go straight across this to properly see what's on the other side of the Menai Straits at this point. You can see our final track here:

I'm pretty impressed by how straight our course was given the strong cross tide going in the opposite direction to the strong cross wind. The waves were big. Possibly the biggest outside white water river kayaking that I have been in. We did have a few that broke over us a bit, but the kayak handled it superbly, we never felt that we were going to capsize or out of control. In the end it was 6.84km which took us 1 hour 20 minutes.

For reference our kayak is an Advanced Elements Convertible Elite Kayak Red

We have the decks (today obviously using the double one) which keep a lot of water out (I also have a full spray skirt but Jane isn't yet ready for that so I didn't use it today):

It was extremely enjoyable exercise. We are definitely going to enjoy using this to explore the coastlines and rivers that we sail to.

The weather for the rest of the week is best described as unsettled and changeable. So not sure which jobs we will be able to work on. However, even with 2 solar panels out of action while we finish the solar tray we still got enough power to put some charge into the car 😄