Heading to the San Juans in Tsunamichaser in search of Badu a Tiki 21. I'll update our position with my spot.

When I built my T26 my oldest brother was pretty fascinated and would ask tons of questions. One day when I called him he announced he was building a cat too. I asked him what design he was doing to which he said "oh I looked at the pictures on Wharram's site and started building." It's a bit of a mash up but then he lives in Nova Scotia where that is the way boats have been done for generations. It works well. Here's a video.

I was checking out the Wharram Tangaroa I posted about awhile ago. The owner, Andy, was onboard and we had a great chat. He told me about some buddies, Julia and Casey who left yesterday on their Tiki 21, Badu, for points unknown but possibly the Sea of Cortez. Here's the link.

http://www.sailblogs.com/member/nycteris/index.php?show=gallery&aid=5579&pid=113706

I borrowed a picture from their blog to post here.

This is the craziest version of seasteading. Kind of appealing though. One way to deal with rent in the high rent districts. Not sure the mangroves would take in Puget Sound!

Huli free day but I did go for a refreshing swim!

The paddle I built this week worked fine ....until I destructively tested it back to "broken iako!" I had nicked the carbon fiber fabric on the blade with a chisel when I was cleaning up excess resin. I filled the nick on the final coat but that is where it failed. I was paddling as hard as I could and snap the blade folded - starting from the cut fibers . Not to worry, I've removed the broken bits from the shaft and have a new and improved blade started. Beta 1 was pretty light, about 4-5 oz lighter than production CF blades of this size so on Beta 2 I've decided to add a 2 mm sheet of plywood to back up the CF as the balsa certainly doesn't provide any strength. The plywood adds about 3 oz. The other thing I'm working on is vacuum bagging. For paddle making my neglected food vacuum bagging unit may just be the ticket. I did a test run on Friday when a made a closed cell foam and CF "hockey puck" the vacuum bagging part worked great though with only one layer of CF the whole thing remains spongy.

Video of the building of an outrigger paddle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCiZE1XVzxk