: Dang, Dan, you must be proud to bustin' of her. Heck, I'm so proud I can
: hardly stand it, and she isn't even my daughter! What a KID!!

Kurt, I'd tell you about all of her other accomplishments but it would sound like I'm bragging. ;-)

She's shown incredible determination from almost two years ago when she first started bugging me about building her own kayak. After a year of that I figured it's something that she really wanted to do and I explained to her that it would be a big commitment. A really big commitment. She still insisted. From the time she started the build it took ten months to finish the boat and she's got a kayak that she can be proud of.

This past weekend we attended the annual WestCoastPaddler Spring Campout and she paddled her new boat there -- it was pretty cool to watch her talking to people about it and later she came to me and told me how cool it was to be able to answer everyone's questions about the construction techniques that she used to build it. A bunch of us paddled to a nearby marina that has a large luxury hotel attached and she got tons and tons of comments and compliments from yacht owners when they passed by all our kayaks as we were tying them up to the guest dock. She got to experience that moment that everyone here who's built a kayak knows -- that feeling of pride you get when a complete stranger walks up and starts admiring and praising something that you built with your own hands. It was cool to watch that happen with her and to see the look of accomplishment in her face as she explained to people the specifics about the boat.

For me, there have been a great many moments along the way where we shared some really cool thoughts and observations about the boat itself and about other things in general, and from that we connected in a way that most daughters and dads typically don't. A friend who was watching the progress of the project said some words that will stay with me always -- "You're not building a boat with your daughter, you're building a daughter with a boat".

Maddie and I were doing a final clean up at the shop tonight when she looked over at me and said "It's been a lot of fun working on the boat and now that it's done it's kind of sad, I'll miss coming to the shop".

Yeah, I'm feeling pretty proud about now.

Dan

http://www.westcoastpaddler.com
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Below is a photo of Maddie's kayak last weekend on South Pender Island in the Gulf Islands, BC.