Saturday, August 25, 2012

Introducing . . . The Glacier


I am just going to post a few images of our latest addition to the fleet. The detailed review will have to wait until we finally get a chance to get the boat on the water!!

Briefly, the Glacier is a glass double built and designed by Craig Greenham of  Eastern Island Kayaks. Craig can design and lay up a boat that will rival and, in many cases, better some of the world's renowned kayak companies.  On July 24th, I gave Craig the green light to build us a new boat. It was ready for pickup on Aug 24th. That's not a bad turn-over for a hand built boat!!!

Cheryl and I drove out to Twillingate to pick up the new boat. We made a chance for some "away-from the-kids" time and spent the night in Gander alone. We drove to Twillingate the next morning to meet Craig. He had the boat prominently displayed on his lawn so that we'd know which house was his. In hindsight, the boat on the lawn in slings would've made an excellent picture - insert face palm here!!!

Our initial impressions of the boat were "wow" and "holy crap, what a beautiful job"!!!

After speaking with Craig for about an hour, settling the score, and strapping it the top of the car, we headed off for Twillingate lighthouse for a look-around.


At Twillingate Lighthouse.

Showing the nice lines!!

Twillingate as the backdrop!!!

When we finally got home and took the boat off the car, we had a chance to look at the craftsmanship. No doubt, I will be doing a full review in the near future. For now, we are just champing at the bit and waiting to get this thing on the water!!!

Cheryl checking out the primary and secondary stability!!

Stay tuned for further updates!!

Thanks for dropping by!!

Sean

6 comments:

  1. Congrats guys ... I know you will spend many memorable moments together in this boat.

    Tony -)

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  2. Thanks Tony. Cheryl is very keen to get this boat on the water. I think we'll soon dispel the myth of the "divorce boat"!!!

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  3. Sean, "wow" and "holy crap" for sure... no doubt you guys will get on some future day paddles with us in the boat...

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  4. Awesome lookin beast. The speed of those things always impressed me. May get one of those once our young ins grow up.

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  5. Cheryl and I took the boat out on Sunday for a 2.5 paddle. The wind was up but it was a great day on the water. Cheryl is a very steady paddler so I just had to slow my cadence down a bit but when I did, it was pretty easy to keep in sync. Even with just me paddling, it's not hard to keep up a good pace. In the future, I think I'll start using my wider GP (3.75" wide) with this boat so that I can get more power with the slower cadence.

    Sean

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  6. Addendum: My son (15) and I took the boat to Octagon Pond on Monday night. He has no paddling experience but was actually quite steady as well, i.e., he kept a good rhythm. We had this boat moving pretty good without even trying. Even at just slow cruising, we had to stop and wait for the single boats. I was doing some "stability tests" but my son was too jittery - afraid I was going to tip the boat over. I managed to get our coamings in the water, which is not too bad for a boat of this width!! Next test - rolling this sucka!!!

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