{"id":1760,"date":"2023-02-26T15:45:15","date_gmt":"2023-02-26T15:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/?p=1760"},"modified":"2023-02-26T15:45:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-26T15:45:15","slug":"segment-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/?p=1760","title":{"rendered":"Segment One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I live near the river Aire and the Leeds-Liverpool canal, and when I moved here I thought it would be great to be able to explore them on the water, but I don\u2019t have a car so a traditional kayak or canoe is impractical. I had a vague memory of seeing a crazy folding bike and inflatable boat adventure, (Alastair Humphries, the initial story I remember seems to have disappeared)<\/a>), which led me to learn about packrafts, and then how expensive they are. Then I found DIY packraft<\/a>, and after some research, ordered a Skeena kit<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kit comes as scored pieces of fabric, which are cut out and heat sealed together using a dodgy-looking instrument called a leather iron<\/a>. It took a long time to build but I really enjoyed the process, it was great seeing it come together. The guidance on the website are really good, including videos, images and written instructions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Folded<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Rear<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Inflated<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The maiden voyage was on the canal, nice tame water but getting in and out was a bit difficult. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Small<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I want to add an extra top-up valve somewhere accessible while afloat, as the temperature of the air inside drops as it cools in contact with the water so they usually need a few puffs after a while. Also required are some more attachment points at the rear for some line to grab on to. In future I might add a removable spray deck – I think my paddling technique has room for improvement as I do a lot of dripping, which gets on my legs in onto the floor, but I am quite short so I think that might have something to do with it. But I kind of like the simplicity of it being open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"View<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Paddle is from https:\/\/www.celticpaddles.com<\/a>, ‘Mania’ model; it splits into 5 pieces so no sections are longer than the blades, and is length and feather adjustable. Buoyancy aid\/PFD is an Astral V-Eight, I haven’t tried out its full function yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Packraft<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Paddle<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Front<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Front<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I live near the river Aire and the Leeds-Liverpool canal, and when I moved here I thought it would be great to be able to explore them on the water, but I don\u2019t have a car so a traditional kayak or canoe is impractical. I had a vague memory of seeing a crazy folding bike […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,26,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canal","category-packraft","category-sloeadventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1813,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions\/1813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloeburn.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}