Around the Great Lakes

The Repair

This week, I’ve decided to take a rest. My thoughts are that I can rest a nagging pain in my arm, let the blisters heal completely, rework some food drops, and fix the crack in my kayak’s seat before it gets too big. Additionally, I have the time to install a backband into the kayak that I like.

This is a new kayak for me and although I did get to paddle it before the trip, I didn’t get to paddle it for 8 to 10 hour days to figure out what I wanted to change in outfitting. After the first 300ish miles I figured out that my foam pillar backband didn’t cut it. The decision at that point was to put a backband in that didn’t pinch my butt between the seat and backband or take the seat out and put a Happy Bottom Seat Pad into the boat.

I actually find the NDK seats comfy, so I wanted to get a backband that would work. I ordered an IR Reggie backband, which is what I have in my Romany. For fun, I took the IR band out of my Romany while I waited for the replacement to show up. It pinches my butt.

To fix the problem I compared the height of the seat back to a few other kayaks and figured out that it’s way too high. File and sandpaper in hand, I worked at lowering the seat about 1/2″ and more in places. I redefined the curve of the seat back to be much more comfy. It now works great — no pinch. A great approach for those experiencing the same problem and who don’t want to remove the seat. I actually recommend that NDK deepen their seat in the back, and lower the top for every boat. They’d have a better seat.

The other problem is the developing crack. I sanded and chipped away the gel coat to find dry carbonfiber. When making an object out of fiberglass or carbonfiber, like my seat, the manufacturer has to wet-out the cloth with an liquid epoxy which hardens and solidifies the cloth into shape. Carbonfiber is extremely hard to tell if it’s completely wet-out. In this case, NDK didn’t get everything wet-out, so I have to do it for them and then repair the gel coat. With drying time, this is about a full day of work.

It’s sort of nice to have time off, but the problem with taking time off is two-fold for me. It moves the finsih date into the first week of October and I’m getting very very very antsy. I want to be on the water.

On the personal side, I do get to spend time with Ilena, which is good. The bad side is that I found out that my landlord is putting our house on the market, so we may have to move before the trip is finished if the house sells. Grand Marais is an extremely hard town to find a rental that is affordable, so we’ll see what happens. I almost wonder if finding jobs elsewhere and moving out of town wouldn’t be easier than finding a new place to live in the area.

For those concerned, I’m not even close to giving up, and I could have put-up with these issues on a shorter trip or if I was just attempting one lake, but one thing I learned on the AT was that if you had an issue and didn’t fix it, it’d still be bothering you weeks and months into the trip. So, I’m fixing it now.

Tags: Kayak, NDK, repair, rest, seat