Maiden voyage

Never again!  I can't tell you how many times those words came out of my mouth when working on this boat.  This one is pretty special in the fact that it took over twelve years to complete and how close it came to scrap many times over those years. 

I helped a friend start this build and got him through construction of the plywood hull, making forms and gluing them in.  I was building a similar kayak for myself at the time so I showed him how to start with the shear strip and all about beveling the rest.  He installed the shear strips as far back as the cockpit and then started on the front deck enough to define the pattern.  There he stalled out.  Ten years later his work forced him to change states and he asked me if I wanted the project.  My wife was ill and I was staying home a lot so we agreed that I needed something to keep me occupied.  That is when I started with the 'never again'.

Some of the forms had come unglued and the rest seemed to want to detach at the most inopportune moments causing some issues in keeping the build fair.  He had not really understood the transition in the area between the front and rear deck so he had left the strips overhanging the front of the cockpit without a starting any type of transition.  When I finally managed to come to terms with these issues I found that the strips were wildly over beveled and I was sanding into open spaces when I was using the fairing board and the deck just started coming unglued.

My friend had purchased the glass and epoxy but the resin was now very dark and I didn’t realize the glass wasn’t going to wet out until I was well into covering the deck.  After buying new glass and epoxy I got the deck glass on and found that I had lots of filler work on the inside where he had over beveled the strips. 

I should have given up then because after filling and sanding the inside of the deck I found that it had grown several inched in width and would no longer fit on the hull.

About this time my wife got much worse and I had to shelve the project myself.  After I lost her I didn’t take it up again for over a year. 

I did finally feel like I needed to do something so I started back on the build.  The results were quite a surprise after all the extra recovery efforts that went into this built. 

And yes, it does have my Moby Latch System on the flush hatches.

Kyle T