New Boat

I have been saving my money for a few months now and finally bought a new boat. It is a Bell Canoe (Did I mention it is Kevlar) It is 15.5 Feet long and it only weighs 42 pounds! I can load on and off the car with ease. I took it out on the lake today to try it out. It paddles very nice. The boat seems to go through the water very well also. I tried out a kayak paddle and really liked that. I think a lot of my paddling will be solo. Since I plan on using the boat to take pictures. I am going to go paddle the Wacissa River next weekend. I hope to have some good pictures to show from my trip. 

Todays trip started out by carrying the boat to the lake in the rain. I decided that I was going to try it out no matter what. I put the boat into the water and got in. It is pretty stable. Sitting in the back seat it lifts the bow up too much. I was able to kneel in the boat more towards the middle and it was much more balanced. I am planning on either adding another seat or turning the boat around and paddling from the other seat. I need to relocate the thwart to a different location. That is the easiest option. I would like to find a place to mount my GPS that I got for a Christmas present. I am checking into a thwart bag with some kind of pocket with a window.  Tonight I made some webbing loops using Samantha's new sewing machine. The loops wrap around one of the supports under the hood and they barely stick out of the hood. I will use these to tie the front of the canoe to keep it stable while driving on the highway. I will post pictures and a report of how this works out next week. Now I am just waiting for the weekend.