May 5, 2017

Late Night Construction Project

Journey On from Tight Loops on Vimeo.

I was still in a fog when I arrived to work this morning and watching "Journey On" while I took care of some medial tasks helped me break into my day. It inspires me to plan more trips exploring nature; summer is upon us and I an so amped to get outdoors!

I stayed up until close to 1:30 am last night constructing the frame for my raft. The design for this rig is inspired by Flycraft rafts; someday I hope to own the real thing. I started with a 9.5' raft I bought from Amazon and constructed the frame from 1" schedule 80 PVC conduit pipe & PVC fittings; the seats and rack are reinforced with metal tubing that fits snugly inside the 1" pipe. It can be broken down into 5 sections; seats (rowing & front), oar stands, front casting brace, and back rack/kid's seat). But I still need to complete a few more items--mainly paint the frame, thread the anchor system, and weave the seats & rack (out of 1" webbing)--but I plan to have this rig in the water by next week...
 
I have the hope (and plan) of floating a few of the larger--yet still very small--streams (and of coarse alpine lakes) in southern Utah; particularly a few private sections of river that to my understanding can still be accessed if floated from/to a public roadway...we'll see how that goes.