Well I don't know what I was thinking, but two weeks ago while my wife was gone on a trip (running in the Chicago Marathon) I thought I could assemble a very quick SOF Baidarka using permenant forms from Nick's offsets for the MAE 593-76, scaled up by 1.3 times. I had the 13 forms cut out and sanded, ready to go, and the four days that I had off from work should be plenty of time to put this thing together. I came down with the FLU instead. Down for six days. But this may have been a blessing, because it gave me time to think about what I was doing. My goal, and my wife's understanding, is that I want to build 6 boats, one for each of us (I have four kids). Granted, several of these 6 will more than likely be SOF kayaks, and I'm sure I won't be able to stop at 6, but since my wife now has a nice Chesapeake 16 hybrid, that's what I want as well. I should never be in such a hurry, I've got a good 40 years of boatbuilding ahead of me, but I only get one boat (at least for the next few years). So, yesterday, I ordered the Cirrus plans from One Ocean Kayak, and the excitement to build couldn't be higher. My second choice is still the Guillemot S&G hybrid, a design that I have manipulated for the last couple of years, and built a few models of. But the Cirrus looks like it will be faster and have better tracking, hopefully have similar manuverability with leaned turns, and simply looks stunning, at least I think so. Is there any comparison to a Chesapeake 16 (only boat I can compare with)? Any thoughts on the Cirrus design? for someone 6'0" and 200lbs? mostly in lakes with occational ocean (bay) daytrips? fishing/photography out of? How many Cirrus builders are there now? How long did it take to get the plans? Thanks for any input. I'll certainly keep you posted.
SMF
P.S. Don't worry about me wasting those Baidarka forms, they will still get used, but I'll eliminate several and make the boat much shorter than 19 feet for one of my kids. And I'll post pics, when it happens.