: I wondered if you were in that area last weekend Andy...

: I was in Trearddur Bay all weekend with one newish and one very new wooden
: kayaks. A friend I'd been showing them off to was then very surprised to
: see another wooden kayak in Porth Dafarch, which he reported as being
: paddled by a man with a magnificent beard - and I thought of you!

Yes, we were out with the Peninsula Canoe Club (the first time I've paddled
with this group), going from Porth Dafarch to Borth Wen in a big group (15
boats and two or three more joined us at Trearddur). This was the maiden
voyage for the Mk III video system, fiddling with which resulted in me
capsizing just after leaving Trearddur, missing my roll twice, missing my
reentry and roll twice and then being ignominiously rescued and lent a pump
as I'd put mine somewhere inaccessible to leave room for the camcorder box...

: Wasn't Sunday just a perfect day? I epoxied the bulkheads into the new kayak
: for my wife. Then while the epoxy was setting we went for a sail towards
: Rhoscolyn in our Myth - red sailed 14 foot clinker boat, you may have seen
: some around on your trip. Took Anna through the White Arch for the first
: time in a sailing boat, after kayaking through a couple of years ago.

You must have been higher in the tide than we were on Saturday - we could only
just squeeze through in kayaks. Lots of red sailed boats about on Saturday -
I thought they were mirrors, but wasn't looking too closely.

: Later, the proper first paddle together each in our wooden kayaks - me in
: my 4 month old Point Bennett, Anna in her brand new "Anna's
: kayak". Lots of stopping to be admired by passing boats. It went
: really calm and was just a lovely evening - bliss. (Only marred by the
: last three jet skis still buzzing about!)

We paddled Soldier's Point to Porth Dafarch - the original scheme was to
continue on to Borth Wen again - if we'd done that we might have seen you.
However, as you can tell from the photos, to paddle the races I chose my
much more stable fibreglass boat (and was quite unreasonably nervous after
the previous day's upset). For some reason there were a lot fewer noisy
boats about off North Stack than in the sheltered bays the previous day
(although there were still a few).

: "Anna's kayak" is very roughly based on the Igdlorssuit lines, but
: modified a bit. It's working almost exactly as I hoped, and Anna's really
: happy with it. There are a couple of pics in my blog - link below - but no
: good pics yet. I'll get some when the deck rigging it added and it's
: *really* finished.

I'd love to see those boats sometime, Dave - I'm planning a couple of boats
based on the Ken Taylor original, as the Anas Acuta (we have a club boat) is
a lot more stable than my hybrid Cormorant for almost the same beam. One of
the people I was paddling with on Saturday has a Valley Qajariaq, and I want
to build something about that size to carry more gear than my Cormorant, but
I also want something just about the size of the original Ken Taylor kayak,
possibly built as a Yost-style folder for trips away... I'm interested to read
that Delft Ship didn't quite get the panel shapes right. How did you have to
modify them ?

Andy