Hello everyone,

I've been lurking around reading the BBS and the archive. I've also visited alot of the kayak pages (great job Ross). My wife, Louise, and I had decided to build our own kayaks, so we'd been reading up in preparation.

This weekend, we drove up from Los Angeles to visit Pygmy Kayaks and test paddle some boats before choosing which kits to build. Louise went with an Osprey Standard, and I chose the Coho. They'd had a run on Coho's so they were out of stock (and will ship it soon), but they had an Osprey kit so we decided to bring it home.

We wrapped the long box with the hull panels in a plastic tarp, taped the ends closed, strapped it on the roof rack, and headed back to LA. It rained on us the whole way home... 20 hours with an 8 hour stop over in San Fancisco. When we got home this morning, we unwrapped the box to find both ends a bit soggy. To our happy surprise, it wasn't very wet inside. Only about the first inch of half a dozen panels got wet. We spread them out in our living room to dry and I don't think that there'll be much visible water damage.

Here's my question:

How long should we wait before starting on the kit? The butt joints are what got wet mostly, and I'm sure that we don't want to seal any moisture into the wood. Is there a way to test the dryness in a couple of days?

Thanks for any suggestions! We're anxious to begin construction.

Later,

Tim and Louise.