paddling with a camera

March 27, 2005. I spent the Friday night and most of Saturday building storage racks in my boathouse, formerly known as a garage. Nothing fancy, just 2x4" lumber, some standard connector hardware, a little bit of old plywood and carpet, ~150 wood screws applied manually. I was more sore than after Texas Water Safari. It seems to be quite sturdy. And, I have a room for more boats!

Next morning I was trying to shoot some pictures of my project with Canon 10D digital camera. After a few regular pictures I ended up shooting pinholes, i.e., pictures without lenses just for fun. I applied dry brush effect and some sharpening in Photoshop to my pinhole image. I shot everything with a tripod. Exposure time for a pinhole was 15 seconds.

I prefer the pinhole image representation for my practical but not really beautiful project.

So, my entire paddling fleet is gathered together. The wide white boat at the bottom on right is Kruger's Sea Wind canoe, then going clockwise: CLC Patuxent 19.5, blue Seda Cyclon, a borrowed Futura Blade surfski (the spot occupied by Feathercraft K1 expedition now), Spencer X-treme - my safari canoe, empty spot (reserved for a surfski or racing kayak like WSBS Thunderbolt, or KayakPro Vampire), and Sisson Nucleus 100. The 24' Surfrigger canoe is hanging diagonally in the garage (somewhat visible on the pinhole image).

Two years later, the racks are still doing fine. In the post How to Choose a Boat for an Ultra Marathon Race? you can find more snapshots of my boats and racks. The surfski has returned back to the owner. Thunderbolt-X kayak has joined my fleet in December 2006.

If you want a more elegant solution for storing your kayaks and if, for any reason, you would like to keep cars in your boathouse, check the great web site of John Caldeira. Unfortunately, my racing kayaks and canoe are too long for that setup (21' - Thunderbolt, 20' - Spencer X-treme, 24' - Surfrigger).

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