Pirate Booty from the Seattle Aquarium

Lots of the usual gift shop fare at the Seattle Aquarium, with the exception of these two fine pieces of pirate treasure. Who can resist a mini sub? And this book had endless aquatic puns with fun illustrations, similar to the prehistoric fish alphabet book that we got last year at the University of Florida Museum of Natural History. Cool finds in a sea of mediocrity!

First Outing!

The boards came out great!!!

The volume balance was perfect in all three!

I predict La's "In the Van" SUP will get a ton of use - nice glide and tremendous stability. When we get to our next duty station, I'll make one of these for myself (a little thinner for better response). From every SUP board I've touched, seen, read about, I think template is the optimum one!

Marlon used his kneeling, sitting, prone and was standing towards the end! No better endorsement than that!!!

Noe was able mimic her big brother in all except the standing part (she didn't want to).

I will make some small tweaks on the kids' boards and then we'll be a paddling family (who paddles their own boards)!!!

In this regard, it is ironic that the place that we as a family have been to and live that had the least amount of waves, ends up being the place that inspires the kids to have the confidence to be water people. For that, I am truly grateful!

Another year of this and we're good and will need to move some place with waves!!!

Glowing Goodness

Ready for painting - Noe's, Marlon's and La's in descending order.

Curved Japanese Block Plane

I'm trying to get the last bit of shaping done on the first three boards so I can get them painted and glassed and wet.

The regular block plane was too big and gouges too much when you're down to the fine sanding. So I finally broke this out - a curved Japanese block plane that I bought when we were back in Japan (duh).

If the blade were just a smidegon narrower, it'd be perfect, but closer is better than butchered.

I've just got to slap some spackle on the boards to fill in some gaps and it'll be time to paint.

In the meantime, I'll work it out with the kiddoroos what else they want on the boards (drawings of plesiosaurs, butterflies, sharks and horses no doubt).

Noe's miniSUB

Yesterday afternoon, I got a chance to work on Noe's board.

With the rough shaping done on all three of the first wave of boards, I shifted to working on the templates for the big SUPs - more on that soon.

I can't find my tiny planer so I'm of to Lowes to see if they have them there. The fine sanding/tip tuning on all three boards should be done soon (then it's glassing time...)

Mini SUBs

The first boards to get processed will be Marlon and Noe's Stand Paddle Up Boards.

I measured each kid's shoulder to shoulder span, made a quick ratio from my own shoulder span to stable board width, and took that ratio and came up with a width for their boards.

I used Aku Shaper (free download if you didn't already know) to come up with a shape that wouldn't necessarily cut through the water, but give the kids more of a stable learning platform that they could take out in small waves one day. I printed out the templates - taped it up, cut it out and traced the outlines on the 6-1 pesci blanks.

More pictures of these "Mini-SUBs" later today