Here's a picture of Calder, my 10 year old son beginning to learn to roll in his new Tom Yost designed Sea Pup. The pool we were in was all of about 9 feet wide, so this is about as far as he got. Our neighbor gave us some lessons, and I rolled for my first time. This weekend we're going to a much bigger pool, and Calder hopes to roll all the way. I think he'll make it. I'm starting to build my first Greenland paddle, and I have plenty of design advice for that, but I'd also like to make one for Calder, and I have my doubts that the traditional measuring methods will work in miniature. He can reach to about 65", (he's small for his age) and I just think a paddle that short may not work very well. I'd think his paddle ought to be more like 72", but that's just an uninformed guess. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
By the way- if you recall, we were building four Sea Pups all at once- so here's a little update. Two were finished pretty quickly, but two still remain incomplete. I'm sort of taking over the work on one of them, as the dad is just too busy to get to it right now, and I'd like the boy to have it to paddle, and also I'd like to get it out of my garage! Sean comes over to play with Calder, so I rope him into helping me on it. Getting pretty close. The other one will probably get finished late in October, when my buddy can find time to come work on it. Why is it that people put dumb things, like income, and school, and marital harmony- above the important stuff- like building kayaks, for instance? Like I should talk. I'm out there building some boring furniture for a client, and I keep gazing wistfully at my barely begun Greenland paddle. Sigh.