Mississippi River Carp Tours

On Saturday morning we had visitors from Yarmouth, Colorado and a Elsah native take us up on a free boat ride in the skiff.  Eifel and I showed them a good time with frequent engine stalling in the shipping channel, two island stops and a fantastic carp frenzy.

Take a look.

The Elsah native (since 1953) had never been out to the islands 600 feet away!  I will not mention his name.  These locals need some boats.

Location Location Location

The house we were renting in Elsah just got a contract on it, so we have to raise anchor.  There is no place that is right for us in Elsah so we are crossing the river to a great house in Chesterfield, MO.
Oriental, NC. is a couple of years off.
The new place has a detached garage that will be the new boat shop. Plus, it is on an acre of hill top that has some of the biggest trees around. They are beautiful and a great substitute for a gantry.
For now we will keep the blog named Elsah Boat until the new name presents itself.  We will also continue to launch in Elsah often.  Our new location is very close to a bend on the Missouri, so we will find a good launch site here as well.
Here is a link to the area we will likely be exploring next:
Howel Island

Back to business: paddles

Now that the river skiff is finished, we are turning our attention back to paddles.  More specifically, composite SUP paddles.
The plugs of our designs from Seattle are the guinea pigs for our vacuum bagging learning curve.
During the last few weeks we have made molds of one of the blades and also designed and molded two additional blades.
The newer blades are sleeker and redesigned with input from Hemel.  They are looking for a racing SUP blade with more width at the tip of profile.
Racers like maximum leverage on the water without too deep an immersion.
Here are some photos of what we have been up to...

The first mold of blade #1

Front of mold and it's plug

Sucking it up