Being out on the water and letting your mind wander is a fantastic way to shake off a rough day at the office or to waste a weekend. While my mind is wandering I often think, hey this is great, the only thing that could make it better was if I wasn't doing any of this work. Since my name is not Meghan W_____s, I actually have to paddle which can be an issue some days. The reason for this post is because I found two fantastic ways around this issue.
- Option 1 – a sail: If you are not as awesome as I am you could go out and buy one of these for your boat, but most of the ones I found online are stationary ones that only work when going downwind. Since I live on a harbor that mostly blows to the east, with home being on the west this would not work. I would be able to get really far off shore, and then not be able to get home and die. That does not sound like a lot of fun. Thus a movable sail is needed. Some of you may know that a few years ago I built a sail for my kayak for just this purpose. The only problem was that I did not have a good sail material, and the sail ripped apart about 100 yards into my first voyage leaving me with a giant sheet of plastic dragging under the boat as I paddled back to shore a defeated man. After this debacle I started looking online for a legit sailing rig. My favorite so far is this thing (look right). It turns your kayak into a full on sailboat. Unfortunately it costs as much as buying another kayak. Since I also carry or tow my kayak to the harbor myself, it is quite unfortunate that this thing adds a friggin ton* of weight.
- Option 2 – a motor: I am in favor of buying personal watercraft that are human powered over motorized because it is better for the environment and bonus: it’s cheaper. Yay $$. Just because I bought a personal watercraft without an engine doesn’t mean I don’t want it to have an engine. I’m pretty lazy, so all that paddling gets to me after a while. I honestly had been thinking about ways to jerrying a powerdrill to a rotor and duck tape it to the rudder for a while now. In an attempt to not electrocute myself or destroy any power tools (I also have a blog about power tools http://blogtool.raytong.com/ ) I found this sweet toy on the interwebs. It is the same type of outrigger as the massive sail has, but instead of a seating platform it has a solar panel (take that $4.26 gas) and a little fishing moter. This toy also would add a ton* of weight to the kayak, so lugging it down to the beach is not particularly an option. Man, if I only had an extra $2,000 and Chuck Norris’ muscles I could have both these sweet toys.
*not an actual ton, just a lot of weight
1 comment:
I am still in favor of sitting still and letting other people do the hard work. That would solve all of your problems.
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