: Hopefully Kyle will read this and
: chime in. He has the experience and not just opinion.

Ok, I'll bite.

Actually instead of glass I added ribs under the front deck to give the 3mm plywood added support. The deck probably would have been fine the way it was but during the racing we do we have to demonstrate that we can safely do a wet entry before we can race. My teammates are a bunch of big strong guys but they are not particularly graceful. You’ve never in your life seen anyone work so hard to drag themselves up onto the deck of a kayak. Believe me it is spectacularly funny to watch. I guess one reason they had so much trouble getting back into the boat is that we emptied the water out before reentering. (It’s a handy trick I've learned but that’s another story). At any rate after the first race in these tandems all the climbing around on the 3mm during the skills test was worrying me so I added three ribs under each deck. Each rib is made up of two ¾ inch wide strips of 3mm plywood laminated together. These work very similar to the deck beams included in the CLC S&G’s. This minimal weight added was enough to give me plenty of confidence that my 3mm decks would never cave in even with the abuse my teammates inadvertently applied every time we had a skills test.

I think it’s time to have the team start practicing that skills test again if just for my entertainment. ;-)

Kyle T.