: Thought I would share some pictures of a recent trip I took out to Broken
: Group, just south of Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
: I camped for 6 nights out of my newish Aleut Baidarka, and was quite happy
: with how she handled it all.

: The boat is based on the LM-2-14886 on Zimmerly's page. 16.5' long,
: 20.5" wide, I made the deck ~3" higher than speced for increased
: legroom and storage, made the hull a little wider in the bilge, and I
: added in home brew hatches.
: The boat empty is really really twitchy, but with a bit of ballast (at least
: 12 pounds mounted low on the keel stringer, I use a 6L water bladder) she
: gets a lot more docile, and with a ton of stuff she just gets better. I
: think just adding some inertia helps.

: About the only damage from the trip was I wore through some of the coating on
: the aft keel, I don't think I had enough on there to start with but what
: was there got lost at some point on some barnacle and shell covered rocks
: causing a slow leak. I think I am going to add a rub strip to it now.

: Oh, and does anyone have advice as to how to get a lot of sand out of a SOF
: kayak? My bow has a serious case of ring around the keel stringer.

Lovely shots! What a nice trip. I'm curious about your Aleutian paddle. Got pics/info?

Tx!

--S