The Corvette gods just didn't seem to want to let me have a working Corvette. After all the headache to get the corvette back, the better part of sorted, inspected, and registered... I drive home and smoke is billowing out of the right rear wheel. Awesome, I now can't risk the Corvette for fear of it catching on fire, or a wheel seizing or something else exciting.

When I picked up the corvette from the shop, I was informed that there was an issue getting the belt tension correct. Apparantly the bracket wasn't correct and no amount of changing belts would fix it, there was simply no room for adjustability. I was a bit confused since the Corvette still probably possesed many cobbled together systems from my father. I also wasn't about to wait to pay the shop to endlessly bang their head against a wall any longer either.

The Corvette, now at least driveable and with definitive proof it was being fueld properly and surviving, was driven by me for a few months, but persisted to nag at me. The need for race fuel was a giant headache, and made it impossible to go beyond a half tanks distance from my house safely. Running it on too low an octane fuel would cause detonation, possibly to probably resulting in internal engine damage. Add that to the fact that at 8mpg and roughly $12 for a mixture of race and pump gas the car cost $1.25/mile, the whole thing seemed ludicrous.

The Corvette came to me in very rough shape. Despite having had a myriad of extended family friends swear the Corvette was worth 40,000 dollars, the Corvette didn't even want to run. With some work and tinkering, we were able to get it to barely scoot along. Replacing the spark plugs introduced major concern, as one of the ceramic centers had been blown out. Those are very hard and thick pieces, and don't just dissappear. Something was woefully wrong. Ontop of that, 10 years of squirrels and mice had moved in and out of the Corvette. It was in rough shape, and needed a lot of attention.

The Dagger Katana came out yet for two more beginner trips, and with much the same results. Notable primary stability (not leaned over), good secondary stability (leaned over) and adequate to good agility. The boat is still very difficult for a beginner to paddle straight, but the skeg as always makes short work of that issue in the flats. Typically I start a beginner with the skeg down for straight aways, and then slolwy reduce the amount of skeg as time goes on. By the end of the trip they're doing good.

The Dagger Katana has seen additional usage since the initial review, this time in the hands of my friend Courtney. She's really new to Kayaking, infact this was her first outing on a boat. We started first with her on this boat on a lake. This is where the skeg really demonstrates just how much of a mutli-purpose boat this really is.

So in the interest of avoiding as much buyers bias as possible, I waited until I had 3 days in the kayak on the water to review it. It's pretty rad, but it has some pros and it has some cons. I'll cover those here.