On Sunday I titled my post “Almost Finished” because we had almost finished our cardboard boats. Well, they are almoster finished now.
Tonight we painted them. There are still a lot of gaps between the drywall tape, and we’ll need to paint their names on the hulls. I fitted the seat in the kayak tonight too, but took it out while we painted. Once we get those three things taken care of, then they will be finished.
We settled on names for both boats too. For the canoe, the candidates were “Bloosh” (because we took all the blueish paint we had and mixed them together), “Redux” (because this is very much like the HMS Sinkeytown that we entered in 2009), and “Maelstrom” because David liked that name (it means a huge storm or a whirlpool). “Redux” won.
For the kayak, the candidates were “KAYAK” (spelled backwards – the intent was to paint it in mirror-backwards) and… I can’t remember the contender. We settled on “KAYAK” spelled backwards.
The paint was given to us by a coworker. He had a lot of paint. I think we used about two gallons, but he gave us close to eight. We had what I like to call “all the colors.” Off-white, beige, light brown, eggshell, taupe, tan, light brown, ecru, and ivory. As I also mentioned, there were about three quarts of different blues.
We had to hustle to get them painted though. We’ve been having some evangelistic meetings at our church for the past couple of weeks, and Va has been running a children’s program in the fellowship hall (where we painted the boats). The meetings start at 7:00, and I was determined that we would have our mess cleaned up by 6:00 so there would be no panicking. So we painted like banshees from 4:15 until 5:45, and then started the clean up.
Meanwhile, Jonathan was still at NHTI until 6:00, so I had to take a kid home, pick up Jonathan, grab some dinner, and then high-tail it back to the church so I could set up my computer for Va so she could play a DVD, and so I could help run the registration table. There was no time for the only optional thing in that list (eating) so I skipped that until afterwards.
I was rather hungry!
Jomegat's Weblog 
May 1, 2012 at 11:06 pm
That’s not just a simple little project! It’s so good for the kids though.
May 1, 2012 at 11:10 pm
It probably could have been done a lot more simply than we did it. In 2009, one team taped up a box the night before the race. It was basically a cube with an open top. All it would do when they paddled it was rotate in place while the current in the lake (as insignificant as it was) took them away from the course. It didn’t sink, but that was the only boat that didn’t finish the course. They sent a “real” boat after him, and he made the transfer without getting wet.
May 2, 2012 at 2:08 am
I miss the kids being younger, but I don’t miss all the running around that they required, I used to miss a few meals that way myself. I guess that may explain why I never got fat back in those days. The boats are looking good!
May 2, 2012 at 7:19 am
I suppose I could trade a bunch of money for reduced running around, but… it would sure take a lot.
May 2, 2012 at 9:08 am
I’m amazed by how much they look like the real thing. It’s going to be interesting to see how they float.
May 2, 2012 at 9:10 am
Paint covers a multitude of sins.