: I'm jealous!... I was hoping I'd see a King at the Newfound Rendezvous but,
: alas, it was nowhere to be found.

Not much chance of that. Joe has the only one in existence--he brought his brand-spankin' new prototype to R2K1, and that was its first time in the water. Hopefully he'll have plans out this spring.

Anyway, you don't see too many of the east coast designers' boats at R2K1, or as many of the west coast designers' boats at the Newfound Rendezvous. Not that there is any "regionalism" involved; it's just that more west coast designs showed up at the first west coast rendezvous, people paddled them, and returned the next year with even more west coast designs. Likely the exact same thing happens at the Newfound Rendezvous.

I was hoping someone would turn up at R2K1 with an Outer Island, but nobody did. Likely if one Outer Island would have been there this year, five would show up next year.

You see a lot of Pygmies, Redfishes, and Guillemots and Great Auks (Thanks in no small part to Nick's book) at the West Coast Rendezvous. A Squeedunk Puffin was there this year, and I'm bringing a Squeedunk Cormorant next year.

I'd imagine you see a ton of Laughing Loons, Guillemots, Shearwaters, and Outer Islands, not to mention CLC boats at the Newfound Rendezvous.

More "intermixing" of east and west coast "species" will happen in the coming years, but it's going to take a little while.

Shawn

: I couldn't get to R2K1, and am dying to
: see and hear more about it! Anybody know when Joe is going to
: "officially" unveil it on www.redfishkayak.com ? I guess I
: could e-mail and ask him, but he's probably sick of answering a very
: common question from lots of fans.

He's working on a couple design tweaks. I'm sure we'll find out quickly when the plans are available.

Shawn