New in the Garage

This is a Vaper 11-amp right-angle polisher, and it's my buddy.

Two themes for today:
1) The Value of Humility
2) Right Tool for the Right Job

The Value of Humility
I like being humble. I feel encouraged and illuminated after a session of listening to an experienced hand. When they're enthusiastic about a skill which they've spent years working with, and I'm new to the game, the rewards are practical and somewhat "archtypically satisfying".
Yesterday, I was down at the local CarQuest shop talking to an older guy about finishing gelcoat, and really enjoyed soaking up the knowledge about tips, tricks, and principles. It's definitely helped me with my kayak work, and has saved me a lot of time and potential frustration.

The Right Tool for the Right Job
I don't know how many times I've learned this lesson, but I'm completely open to having more gear in the garage. Having to buy another tool is like having to open another Christmas present. Seriously, I spent a while using the random orbital sander with rubbing compound on the gelcoat of my boat hull, and didn't get anywhere. The ROS has high RPMs but not much torque. A right-angle polisher has suitably low RPMs and enough torque to keep them steady when applying downward pressure to your material. Further, the handle sticking out the side lets you apply this pressure steadily while letting the machine do most of the work. Yet another case where the right tool saves time, energy, and frustration.

Wine Update

We checked the specific gravity of the wine - this tells us how far along the fermentation process is. The process started five days ago after we added the yeast.

Today, the specific gravity of Mark's amarone was at 1.012, low enough to add additional sugar to the mix. The amarone is a sweeter wine, and we must have added about three cups of sugar. In this photo, Mark is mixing the sugar into the fermenting juice. Amarone comes out with a distinctly soft, raisiny flavor and a powerful dose of alcohol. It's a bit two sweet for my taste, frankly.

The Montepulciano was about as far along in the fermentation process, but doesn't need the sugar. I'll give it a day or two more before racking it. It's coming along, pretty neat and somewhat odoriferous.

Summer? Denied!

Is it possible to have a freak snowstorm in Alaska? Well, here in Anchorage we were hurtling towards summer at a breakneck pace - a week of 50-55 degree temperatures, trees starting to bud, pussy willows starting to appear (see previous post). Then BAM! 12 inches of snow on Friday. It's winter all over again. It was exciting. :)

Actually, for the past several years it seems that we have one big snowstorm in the Spring. This time it came in April. It smelled like one of the first days of Winter, which if you don't know about that, it's nice. Plus it's staying light out until about 9:30 or later, and a few of my friends remarked that it was neat to see the heavy snow in the daylight on a weekday. During the winter, if you're keeping regular office hours, it may be dark when you go to work, and dark when you come home. Drives some people nuts, but you'd be surprised how many more people I know that have more trouble with endless light than endless darkness. The light messes with their sleep schedule more, which can have a big impact on you, chemically.

Making Wine To Celebrate Summer

This week we started a wine making process using kits we picked up at a local brewery supply shop. Mark selected an Amarone, and I selected a Montepulciano. This should take a few weeks of "activity" and about six months of aging. So.. get ready for some Christmas wine. :)

I posted a few photos on Picasa, and will post more as we go. Our boss lent us some of his equipment for our first run, though if this works I can't imagine not getting my own set of equipment.

The kits are made by a company called Winexpert. We've already called them up with questions, and I have to say that they're absolutely great about helping you out. They're happy to take questions and share advice. When you call, you actually get "real" people.

Having tried some of this already, I can attest to the wine being of good quality. Is it comparable to the best Duckhorn Merlot? Not really. Is it better than Australian kangaroo-themed wine? Absolutely and by far. What I've had is good stuff, so as long as we don't mess it up, we should have about 12 gallons of good wine at the end of this for the cost of our time and about $260. That works out to about $4.50 a bottle, which is a killer deal.

The wine is supposed to be in good shape when aged for six months, and will improve up to three years. We'll see how that goes. Right now the wine is sitting in a room fermenting. Nice!

Monopod Improvement

Philip has posted a few images of the kayak camera monopod he made.

This is really awesome! Thanks for crediting my post on the idea, Phil, but you made some great modifications - adding lanyards to connect the monopod to the boat, and a detachable lanyard to connect the camera to the monopod. Very good improvements!! I've actually lost my camera overboard before, but was very lucky in that it happened close to shore during high tide. :)

Last summer I was connecting my camera with a lanyard to the rigging of my boat, but I like your idea far better and will probably implement this summer.

Also of note is that Phil is using a Discover XL (yay!) from Northwest Kayaks. This is the same boat I (ab)use, so that was neat to see. He has a lot of other modifications documented on his flickr site including a solar panel kit. Notably, to accomodate mounting a sail, he had installed the Scotty Flush Mount for the monopod perpendicular to my arrangement to handle this particular type of stress. This is a great idea. I haven't ever tried putting a sail on the boat, but I'm sure it's fun.

Objectively, I think this is the most versitile way to install the mount, and have to confess that I obsessed over this decision for a little while when putting mine in. Were I to do it over, I might go with this functional configuration.

Kayak Gelcoat Repair

I've been spending the month of April doing some repair work on the hull of my kayak. I've uploaded some photos to a Picasa album, and will add comments on most of them regarding the process and lessons learned. This is a work in progress, and I will be updating until complete.

Some of the challenges of doing this in April include the temperature - 40 degrees during the day - which makes the curing process a little harder.

Summer is Approaching

I've been spending time in the pool doing skills refinement for the past few months with Alaska Kayak School. Very Nice! It's really advantageous to be practicing the basics over and over with a BCU coach. At the last session, a lot of what my coach has been telling me over and over again finally made it into muscle memory. It's very much an "ah-ha" type of moment when a series of motions gels in a new, elegant, 'correct' way.

This Sunday I'll be spending another four hours in the pool, and then during the first weekend in May, I'll be going on my first camping trip of the summer. Can't wait - It'll be a bit cold, and I'll have to spend next week washing/prepping all my gear.

I did get Gordon Brown's book, Sea Kayak: A Manual For Intermediate & Advanced Sea Kayakers, a couple months ago. Very good book - there's a lot of knowledge and experience packed into the book, covering everything from paddling technique to navigation, weather, and reading the water.