Merry Christmas, y'all. Upcoming adventures to give yourself

Lucky, lucky you. It's shameless merchandising time.

What better time than Christmas to give you all a chance to sign up for some big fun adventures with me next year? I have posted three upcoming adventures I'll be participating in next year over on the lower right side of the blog page. Scroll down below the BLOG ARCHIVE, down below ABOUT ME, and you'll get to MORE STUFF.

I've listed two boatbuilding classes I will be teaching--one on lapstrake boatbuilding here at my boatshop in March;

 

and another in building the McKenzie River dory back in Maine in July.

As well, I have put up notice about a Rogue River trip my friends Andy Hutchinson, Kate Thompson, RJ Johnson and I are putting together for mid-August. We do something wacky every year, and this is one of the wackiest. (Here is a shot from our 2015 adventure on the upper Colorado River.)

So check them out and sign up yourself and all your friends. And have a very fine celebration of baby Santa's birthday.

Oh--in the boatshop today I managed to finish off the removable transom, weatherstrip all the hatches, adjust the latches, affix the safety line hardware, and finish the coolio boatman's seat. It folds down flat for big rapids and has SeaDek on top to help keep from slipping around.

And it folds up into a backrest for casual rowing, with a second layer of foam beneath the seat so one's tush is always padded.

And the whole apparatus slides out,

flips over, and nestles into the footwell,

killing two birds with one stone--it levels the deck where the footwell is, and removes the protruding seat from the deck, making a California King-sized bed. Sweet.