I hate it when a great build thread with interesting ideas goes dormant, especially if the thread never gets updated again. So to not leave anybody following this hanging....
I tried to have the camper upstairs ready for the camping trips we had planned for this summer, but life gets in the way. Mostly my main job. I had to travel for work enough that it cut into the limited building time I had.
I also had some foamie kayaks to finish for my parents, the people I designed sawfish for, and my kids. Then I had a friend ask me for two more, I already had one half built that I was going to sell him, but after I tested it in the water I realized that it was too tippy for me, and not safe to sell to anyone else. So to keep my word to him, I whipped out two more Sawfish, meaning I launched 8 new kayaks this summer, which I had not planned on.
One of them was a kayak that my daughter had been working on, off and on, over the past two years. She really wanted to get it done before our Adirondack camping trip, and we test launched it the day before we left for the Adirondacks.
I actually did a bunch of work on the foam walls that the upper cabin will be made from, mostly glueing on the plywood strips that will be the "spars" of the roof, and the plates that will be the channels that lock the wall sections together.
I was still turning the problem of how to lock the upper walls together once the whole structure is in place, and believe I have visualized the way to make it work. It will be a combination of velcro straps with one end glued deep into each panel and the other end sticking too a velcro strap anchored into the panel next to it, as well as locking notches in certian overlaps, and possibly some straps tied off to the roof of mercury running up over the roof of the upper cabin.
After all I don't want my girls to wake up outside when they fell asleep inside the upper cabin, because it blew away in the night.
Once the end of June hit we were in camping mode and that lasted until the end of July. With one week of camping in the Adirondacks (which turned out to be a bust, we picked the one place in the northeast US that got rain, thunderstorms, and finally 55 degrees and howling wind, NONE of which was predicted before it happened) Sleeping in Mercury, we were nice and comfy, my kids were camping on an Island out on the lake in tents and woke up wondering if the tents would be blown flat, or even blown away. My Brother in Law said the wind came in massive blasts that you could hear coming long before they hit, and then after they passed it would be quiet for a few minutes, just long enough to start drifting off to sleep before the next blast could be heard aproaching. This started at about 2AM and when I paddled over to see how they were making out at about 6AM the wind had settled into a continous cold flow. The kids were up huddled around the campfire trying to get it hot enough to keep warm. We abandoned the campsite on the Island and my sister and her family headed home...
Mercury came through the thunderstorms, and evening rain (like clockwork, just before dinner, almost every night all week) without any issues, the cool nights were no issue, and even the howling wind on the last night didn't even shake Mercury or wake me up.
Mercury hauled 6 kayaks on her roof, up to the Adirondacks, and returned with only four on the roof. Which is exactly what I made that big flat roof for. We also brought six bicycles.
The next week we went camping in North Conway, NH, in the Mount Washington valley. We were at Eastern Slopes Camping Area. The Campground is right on the Saco River, and has two beaches on the river, with enough distance inbetween them to make tubing between the beaches a fun activity, with a short walk back up to the upper beach.
Mercury hauled four kayaks on this trip, and six bicycles inside.
The last camping trip for the season for Mercury was to a church campmeeting in the Adirondacks, only this time the wife and I stayed in a cabin, and the four kids stayed in Mercury.
For the first two trips in Mercury, my wife and I slept in the main cabin the normal direction, and one child slept in the forward cabin crosswise. The Girls slept in a tent, they would have like the roof cabin, but that will have to wait until next year.
For the campmeeting I added a shelf to the main cabin, the shelf is free floating for now, I plan on adding brackets for it to rest on when we want it up out of our foot and knee space, but currently it rests on the tops of the wheel well boxes. This allowed our three girs to sleep in the main cabin cross wise, with two on a double air mattress on the floor, and one on a single mattress on the shelf. A few nights we were there it was cool, but with the foam walls they were comfortable. My son enjoyed having the six sided room in the nose. The area between the doors in just enough for an adult to sleep in, and the space in the point of the nose is perfect for keeping clothes in so they are nice and warm when you get up in the morning.
Once July was over, it is firewood season, I need to have six cords of wood to make it through the winter, I came through last years excuse for winter with 4 cords still ready to burn. I am currently working on the huge pile of rounds I have cut but not split or stacked, and also scrouging as many more rounds as I can get. Firewood prep season runs until daylight savings ends, then I will be back to boat building, as it will be too cold to do much work outside on the teardrop at that point.
I will post up the pictures of the work I did get done to Mercury, and from our camping trips, and any final prep work to get Mercury ready for the winter.
Thrifty !!!
