Design Stage

I redrew the bow and stern sections making the boat with 10% higher volume than the prototype. I hope this doesn't prove to be a mistake, as I am also decreasing the weight of the boat. Later I added the curve to the top of the bow and stern decks, and changed the shape of the forms after 25'-6".

I want the woodwork on the deck to get away from the long straight lines of the boat by creating the illusion of depth and motion.



I like the idea of a twisted ribbon: red cedar on one side, stripped red/yellow on the other, over a yellow cedar background, twisting loosely around a thin meandering strip of dark hardwood. This is drawn out in full scale on freezer paper.

The method for building this top deck will stray very far from normal strip-kayak building. The decks are each about 10ft long and about 12" at one end, tapering to nothing at the other. I'm hoping I've solved the problem I had last time with glassing the inner seam where the deck meets the hull. It is extremely difficult to reach into a 10ft long tube!


The next big challenge is the rowing deck itself. In my effort to make the boat both light and stiff, I am going to cast the deck in carbon fibre and embed attachments for the rowing hardware. For this I will need to make a form that will look something like this, shown in negative shape and upside down.