Monday Photo Feature

I bought a tandem touring kayak several years ago from a friend who was selling it at a good price.  Since then I've used it to take non-paddling friends out on nice days, like I'm doing above, but nothing more ambitious than that.

The boat lacks bulkheads, meaning that the entire vessel will fill with water in the event of a flip.  The absence of bulkheads also means no hatches for storing camping gear for a longer trip.  And the seats are uncomfortable.

I've reached a lull in my woodwork, so I'm spending some time jazzing up the tandem boat.  I'm going to install bulkheads and hatches and do something about the seats.  Because I think every canoe and kayak racer should have at least a basic working knowledge of fiber-reinforced plastics, I plan to share my project here in both words and pictures over the next few days.

By no means am I a master boatbuilder myself; my 30-plus-year paddling career has been a hodgepodge of learning-by-doing experiences.  The project before me involves a couple of things I've never tried before.  I'll share it all here so that others might learn this stuff a little faster than I have.  And if anybody knows of a way to do something that's better than the way I do it during the course of this project, I invite him or her to share it in the Comments section so that we may all learn something.