{"id":25126,"date":"2017-09-02T15:11:43","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T14:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=25126"},"modified":"2017-08-29T16:04:45","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T15:04:45","slug":"outfitting-our-canoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2017\/09\/outfitting-our-canoe\/","title":{"rendered":"Outfitting our Canoe"},"content":{"rendered":"

We haven’t been out in our home-made canoe<\/a> yet this year. Probably a number of reason for this but the main ones are:<\/p>\n

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  1. It’s not going to be easy to man-handle onto and off the roof rack of our camper.<\/li>\n
  2. I’ve been wanting to add some buoyancy to it for the sake of safety.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Although it’s made of wood, and therefore floats even if full of water, it would be difficult to get it back if you happened to capsize any distance from the shore. It would be fine in a small river but we are more likely to be out in estuaries or lakes and I\u00a0didn’t feel safe taking Anna and Morgan out in it without a little more security. I wanted to fit some air bags to it to help keep it afloat a little more in the event of a capsize.<\/p>\n

    \"Canoeing<\/a>

    Canoeing in Borth<\/p><\/div>\n

    Equipment and Tools for Outfitting our Canoe<\/h2>\n

    The first job was therefore to add some way of attaching the airbags to the canoe so that they\u00a0wouldn’t just pop out if submerged. They need to be fixed quite securely in place. Whilst doing this I thought that I might as well stitch some rope all along the side of the boat so as to add attachment points for equipment inside the boat as well. It’s not likely that we’ll be going on any major expeditions in it any time soon but it would nice to be able to secure equipment in it at some point should I decide to head off on a canoe camping. Beside, the very act of boat-building and outfitting a canoe is a pastime in itself so adding new features to a boat we’d already built ourselves seemed like a fun thing to do.<\/p>\n

    Ideally I would have paddled lots of boats and tried out all sorts of ways of doing things so that I would know exactly what I wanted where. That\u00a0isn’t the case. We built the canoe on a whim last year and have since played around in it once or twice. I thought a simple set up that provided plenty of flexibility was therefore the way forward. The simplest solution seemed to be a basic rope weaved along the side of the boat on both sides. I therefore set to work.<\/p>\n

    We’d already bought a set of Peak Air Bags.
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