No Surf Weekend

It's terrible for my physical fitness to skip a weekend of surfing. The forecast was questionable and JB was just as hesitant as I was. I've been falling behind on "Life duties" and took the weekend to take care of the family. I did sneak in some surf related work by doing some of the repairs to the Downing-Hennessey (DH), and some water time with an hour in the canoe.

The delams on the DH are extensive. Because the board is an experiment, I didn't want to strip wax and rebuild the void spaces, so I went with a more basic approach. I drilled a feed hole in one end of each delam, and a vent hole in the other end. Fill a large syringe with resin and push resin into the feed hole until it starts to come out the vent hole. Then wrap and strap to squeeze everything together while it cures.

I mixed up 8oz of resin so that I would have plenty to work through the delams and spillage, etc. Well, I used it all and didn't manage to fill all the gaps. After everything cured the deck is wavy where the straps squeezed down, or didn't squeeze down. I have more filling to do, but probably only need to mix 4oz this time because I got most of the delam gaps "good enough" to go surf. There's work to be done fixing a 10-in crack  along one rail that is not water tight, and the tail (taped off in the photo) that is also leaking. When I got it the tail had a layer of dried salt that wiped off.

On Sunday the weather was forecast to be nice early, so I grabbed my son and went for a short paddle in the estuary. We went just a bit further away to a spot not surrounded by buildings, but still urban.

He doesn't last long in the boat, so we were probably only out for an hour of gentle paddling in a big circle. Afterward we did our usual beach combing and I'm glad he's old enough to avoid trash because there was as much broken glass as shells to find. I tried to google around for a way to decontaminate clams because I'm sure there's some to be found in this rocky muddy shoreline. But this is surrounded by the OAK airport, Oakland Colosseum, etc. so certainly not safe to eat any filter feeders.