Bezabor: Back to Ocean Park- (posted 10/10/05 from Ocean Park, Maine)
Sunday, 10/9/05 -
More rain is predicted for today so it's nice to be in a regular house--- one with a shower, a TV, and an internet connection. After getting up late and enjoying nice, hot showers, we decided we'd go to Freeport. I wanted to pick up a couple of pairs of Smartwool socks I'd seen in the LL Bean outlet store and I also wanted to stop again at the Lincoln Canoe and Kayak shop just outside Freeport. I had seen a kayak sail there and wanted to learn more about how it would be used. We only needed the socks at LL Bean but we were surprised to see the parking lots very crowded. Bean was apparently having a 20 per cent off sale --- or maybe it was just the rainy weather-- and the town was very crowded. So we didn't stay any longer than necessary--- just get in, get the socks, and get out. What a circus.
At the Lincoln shop, I spent a lot of time considering the two different types of kayak sails they had. One was more or less just a triangle of sail about three feet high that you would hold up inverted and allow the wind to push you along. But that one depended on having a rudder on the kayak for steering and only one of our kayaks has a rudder; the other uses a skeg for better tracking in a beam wind.
But the second sailing rig was a design I'd not seen before. It's a paddle-sail. You install this triangle of sail on your kayak paddle. Two corners of the sail (along the bottom or 'foot' of the sail) attach to the paddle blades. A fitting then goes on the center of the paddle shaft to place the bottom of a fiberglass rod to hold up the apex of the sail. You also hold this rig to capture the wind but you still have your paddle blades to make minor corrections or brace and if things start getting out of hand you can easily drop sail (I think!). I'm going to find out; I bought the paddle-sail.
The other new thing we saw at the Lincoln shop was a forward day-hatch. The fiberglass kayaks now have a small hatch-- it's only about four inches across-- right in front of the cockpit rim. Under the deck, the hatchway drops into a four-inch tube which goes forward 18 inches or so to the back of the bulkhead. I don't know why the forward hatch is as long as it is underdeck but it would be nice to have that storage area available to you while paddling. We saw these on the Eggemoggin, Schoodic, and Isle-au-Haut models of fiberglass and kevlar kayaks. I wouldn't mind having the Eggemoggin.... in kevlar it's only 43 pounds for a 17 -1/2 foot kayak with lots and lots of storage. That would be so much nicer to throw up on the van roof than our 65-pound poly kayaks. But then again, the Eggemoggin was $2875! Gotta play that Powerball ticket....
Upon return to the cabin, we had dinner with our friend and two of her local buddies and sat around telling stories... a very nice evening.
Saturday, 10/8/05 -
We awoke in the Brewer Wal-Mart parking lot to a steady and windy rain with more rain predicted. The harder rain had found another leak. We had a steady drip in an upper storage compartment. More troublesome was a leak that later developed near the van wall by my pillow-- we would either have to fix that one or come up with alternate sleeping arrangements. In hopes of blocking off the leaks until they could be fixed more permanently we bought some duct tape and drove to a nearby car wash which had doors high enough to fit the van and kayaks. That allowed us to dry the top pretty well and then to tape up the area around the roof rack track I had installed for the kayaks; I thought maybe I had not sealed the area well enough. But once we went back out into the rain we still had the leaks so I now suspect one comes from the ventilation bubble and the other from the joint between the fiberglass top and the van wall; I found an area where the previous owner had apparently done some sealing and I'm guessing that all the travel on the pot-holed dirt roads may have opened up a small crack.
We did not have anything else planned for the Bangor area and with the rainy forecast decided we would head back to Ocean Park and visit Labashi's childhood friend for a few days. We called to see if that would be OK and of course it was. It was only a two-and-a-half hour drive down I-95 to her house so we spent the rest of the afternoon doing that and arrived in time for a nice dinner.
Friday, 10/7/05-
We did a little shopping in the Wal-Mart to replenish supplies, then headed back to Orono. We walked through the Littlefield Ornamental Trial Garden, which at one time must have been a demonstration garden for varieties of crabapple trees-- there must have been a hundred of them, all different.
Afterwards we went to nearby Old Town. I enjoyed The Map Store and chatted with the owner. I mentioned that my Garmin GPS had recently developed a problem with the joystick--- the switching mechanism for left-right wasn't working so I couldn't enter data on the little keyboard that pops up when you enter a waypoint; I could only go up and down the left-most column of the keyboard. I asked whether he had any experience sending back a GPS to be fixed and he noted that generally they offer to sell you a rebuilt unit. But he then asked if he could look at my problem. I thought he was going to try to open up the case but after I fired it up all he did was put it up very close to his ear and listen for the sound of the joystick switch as he worked the joystick. He pulled out ever-so-slightly on the joystick and, voila!-- it started working normally. I don't know that it's a permanent fix but for now it seems ok now and I know how to get it working again if needed. He didn't charge anything for his magic fix but I had earlier noticed a $18 booklet of overlays for the Gazetteer maps which give you an accurate GPS fix for any position on the map so I bought those even though I had decided earlier that they were too expensive for all the more often I'd use them.
The owner was quite an interesting character-- he said he lived on the indian reservation over above Calais and he had been a warden and teacher. He mentioned that one of his students had a column in the Maine hunting and fishing newspaper about GPS navigation. He is going to teach a GPS course on October 22nd and if I were in the area I'd be tempted to take it; I'm sure it will be very thorough and interesting.
After The Map Store, we went into the Old Town Canoe factory store for a look around. You have to admire the company for bouncing back from the brink of extinction with their poly canoes and recreational kayaks lines but canoe-building no longer seems to contain any art-- now it's just a matter of popping them out of the molds and shipping them off to the sporting goods department stores. On the other hand, it allows more people to enjoy the sport at a relatively low price and if they want to get into the more challenging aspects of ocean kayaking, they can still go do that at a specialty shop with the training and more specialized gear and will be starting out with some experience. If, on the other hand, they prefer to just explore the quieter backwaters, the recreational kayak will serve them well and for a long time.
After Old Town we searched for several of the freebie campsites shown on the Gazetteer maps near Milford but we had no luck. We either couldn't find them or they were walk-in sites or, as far as we could tell, they didn't exist. I should write to Delorme and ask them what criteria they use and whether they have the GPS positions for the sites; we're not sure what's going on here.
We had done our searching for the free campsites in a general trend back toward the Brewer Wal-Mart in case we could not find anything suitable and that proved a good strategy. We spent our second night there.
Sunday, 10/9/05 -
More rain is predicted for today so it's nice to be in a regular house--- one with a shower, a TV, and an internet connection. After getting up late and enjoying nice, hot showers, we decided we'd go to Freeport. I wanted to pick up a couple of pairs of Smartwool socks I'd seen in the LL Bean outlet store and I also wanted to stop again at the Lincoln Canoe and Kayak shop just outside Freeport. I had seen a kayak sail there and wanted to learn more about how it would be used. We only needed the socks at LL Bean but we were surprised to see the parking lots very crowded. Bean was apparently having a 20 per cent off sale --- or maybe it was just the rainy weather-- and the town was very crowded. So we didn't stay any longer than necessary--- just get in, get the socks, and get out. What a circus.
At the Lincoln shop, I spent a lot of time considering the two different types of kayak sails they had. One was more or less just a triangle of sail about three feet high that you would hold up inverted and allow the wind to push you along. But that one depended on having a rudder on the kayak for steering and only one of our kayaks has a rudder; the other uses a skeg for better tracking in a beam wind.
But the second sailing rig was a design I'd not seen before. It's a paddle-sail. You install this triangle of sail on your kayak paddle. Two corners of the sail (along the bottom or 'foot' of the sail) attach to the paddle blades. A fitting then goes on the center of the paddle shaft to place the bottom of a fiberglass rod to hold up the apex of the sail. You also hold this rig to capture the wind but you still have your paddle blades to make minor corrections or brace and if things start getting out of hand you can easily drop sail (I think!). I'm going to find out; I bought the paddle-sail.
The other new thing we saw at the Lincoln shop was a forward day-hatch. The fiberglass kayaks now have a small hatch-- it's only about four inches across-- right in front of the cockpit rim. Under the deck, the hatchway drops into a four-inch tube which goes forward 18 inches or so to the back of the bulkhead. I don't know why the forward hatch is as long as it is underdeck but it would be nice to have that storage area available to you while paddling. We saw these on the Eggemoggin, Schoodic, and Isle-au-Haut models of fiberglass and kevlar kayaks. I wouldn't mind having the Eggemoggin.... in kevlar it's only 43 pounds for a 17 -1/2 foot kayak with lots and lots of storage. That would be so much nicer to throw up on the van roof than our 65-pound poly kayaks. But then again, the Eggemoggin was $2875! Gotta play that Powerball ticket....
Upon return to the cabin, we had dinner with our friend and two of her local buddies and sat around telling stories... a very nice evening.
Saturday, 10/8/05 -
We awoke in the Brewer Wal-Mart parking lot to a steady and windy rain with more rain predicted. The harder rain had found another leak. We had a steady drip in an upper storage compartment. More troublesome was a leak that later developed near the van wall by my pillow-- we would either have to fix that one or come up with alternate sleeping arrangements. In hopes of blocking off the leaks until they could be fixed more permanently we bought some duct tape and drove to a nearby car wash which had doors high enough to fit the van and kayaks. That allowed us to dry the top pretty well and then to tape up the area around the roof rack track I had installed for the kayaks; I thought maybe I had not sealed the area well enough. But once we went back out into the rain we still had the leaks so I now suspect one comes from the ventilation bubble and the other from the joint between the fiberglass top and the van wall; I found an area where the previous owner had apparently done some sealing and I'm guessing that all the travel on the pot-holed dirt roads may have opened up a small crack.
We did not have anything else planned for the Bangor area and with the rainy forecast decided we would head back to Ocean Park and visit Labashi's childhood friend for a few days. We called to see if that would be OK and of course it was. It was only a two-and-a-half hour drive down I-95 to her house so we spent the rest of the afternoon doing that and arrived in time for a nice dinner.
Friday, 10/7/05-
We did a little shopping in the Wal-Mart to replenish supplies, then headed back to Orono. We walked through the Littlefield Ornamental Trial Garden, which at one time must have been a demonstration garden for varieties of crabapple trees-- there must have been a hundred of them, all different.
Afterwards we went to nearby Old Town. I enjoyed The Map Store and chatted with the owner. I mentioned that my Garmin GPS had recently developed a problem with the joystick--- the switching mechanism for left-right wasn't working so I couldn't enter data on the little keyboard that pops up when you enter a waypoint; I could only go up and down the left-most column of the keyboard. I asked whether he had any experience sending back a GPS to be fixed and he noted that generally they offer to sell you a rebuilt unit. But he then asked if he could look at my problem. I thought he was going to try to open up the case but after I fired it up all he did was put it up very close to his ear and listen for the sound of the joystick switch as he worked the joystick. He pulled out ever-so-slightly on the joystick and, voila!-- it started working normally. I don't know that it's a permanent fix but for now it seems ok now and I know how to get it working again if needed. He didn't charge anything for his magic fix but I had earlier noticed a $18 booklet of overlays for the Gazetteer maps which give you an accurate GPS fix for any position on the map so I bought those even though I had decided earlier that they were too expensive for all the more often I'd use them.
The owner was quite an interesting character-- he said he lived on the indian reservation over above Calais and he had been a warden and teacher. He mentioned that one of his students had a column in the Maine hunting and fishing newspaper about GPS navigation. He is going to teach a GPS course on October 22nd and if I were in the area I'd be tempted to take it; I'm sure it will be very thorough and interesting.
After The Map Store, we went into the Old Town Canoe factory store for a look around. You have to admire the company for bouncing back from the brink of extinction with their poly canoes and recreational kayaks lines but canoe-building no longer seems to contain any art-- now it's just a matter of popping them out of the molds and shipping them off to the sporting goods department stores. On the other hand, it allows more people to enjoy the sport at a relatively low price and if they want to get into the more challenging aspects of ocean kayaking, they can still go do that at a specialty shop with the training and more specialized gear and will be starting out with some experience. If, on the other hand, they prefer to just explore the quieter backwaters, the recreational kayak will serve them well and for a long time.
After Old Town we searched for several of the freebie campsites shown on the Gazetteer maps near Milford but we had no luck. We either couldn't find them or they were walk-in sites or, as far as we could tell, they didn't exist. I should write to Delorme and ask them what criteria they use and whether they have the GPS positions for the sites; we're not sure what's going on here.
We had done our searching for the free campsites in a general trend back toward the Brewer Wal-Mart in case we could not find anything suitable and that proved a good strategy. We spent our second night there.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 15:49
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home