Nope, no new boat built this year, but, after 7 years the wife's Panache was looking pretty sad. The cloth tape on the stems had gone all cloudy and, after hundreds of sea miles it was looking pretty beat up. I offered to build her a new one but she is totally in love with this boat and said no (whew). So we decided to replace all the metal fittings with wooden ones and paint over the damaged areas in an attempt to spruce it up a bit. We came up with this abstract loon design...

The other project: The boat in the background (my dognose boat) now has a tail. I saw one of Vaclav's carbon fiber rudder systems and had to build myself one. What a fun project and one that doesn't take an entire winter to complete.

Now, I'm off to paddling these things... see ya on the water ~Edgar