Benches & Clean Up Day

While waiting for new stock of galvanized pipe and plumbing fittings to arrive in Ketchikan, a little carpentry was in order to create seating for the outfitting area. Greg and Lars watched a You Tube video about building benches and set to work.

The Benches before varnish.

They have made some awesome benches using simple materials: 2x12s, 2x6s, 4x4s and satin spar varnish.

Friday was clean-up day. The Crystal Serenity was scheduled to pay a random visit to Ketchikan, 3 weeks ahead of the regular season, which gave us an excellent reason to get ready for customers. Here is how it began...

It was a little daunting... but with some elbow grease and a lot of help from Lars it started to look better.

and better...

Until by 5:30pm, it was pretty presentable.

The finished benches

Our new POS area

The outfitting area
And the the same area last November....

Pipe Creations

Declan tests out the new racks

Anyone who has worked for Southeast Sea Kayaks will be familiar with Greg's special skills in constructing things out of plumbing materials that no one else would think of using for that particular purpose. The previous owners had added poles to the Carricraft to make sure that the roof was supported with lots of people standing on it. While we don't plan to carry a crowd on the roof, we might stack kayaks on it, so replacing the support poles seemed like a good idea. Greg saw an obvious opportunity for pipe creations.  In addition to roof support, what we need is lots of hanging space for all of our rain jackets, life jackets and sprayskirts. The galvanized steel pipes that most people use for plumbing or heating also make great gear racks, so Greg purchased every piece of pipe and fitting that he could find in Ketchikan and set to work. The resulting racks, functional as roof supports and gear hangers and not bad looking at all, would make Martha Stewart proud.

The first row of racks are in