Beautiful Kayak! I did the same as you and paddled my new kayak prior to finishing, it is a great motivator to get the finishing done as I now want to paddle my new yak as opposed to the old one even more. That said, I'm off to the shop (hemm garage :-)) to do some final sanding/cleaning so that I can put the first coat of varnish on tommorow AM. Good Luck!

John

PS - I'll get a pic of mine posted too. I might as well get a few coats of varnish on it first though.