Sea Through Rover part 1

It's been a month since the last entry and only a couple of short paddles have been done. A cold put paid to paddling for a couple of weeks, then I caught another bug - the Building Bug. I can normally fight of the draw of kayak building for a couple of years but Tom Yost's clear skin wood framed Sea Rider was too much to resist. In a tucked away corner at work a 15m roll of clear PVC had been gathering dust for the last 4 years - perfect!

I went for the Sea Rover instead of the Rider since I wanted a kayak solely for rolling and the Rover had less volume. First stage was to transfer the offsets for the stations onto paper. This was fairly straight forward, the most difficult part being the conversion of imperial feet into the metric that I can understand. A spreadsheet helped here. Once on paper I transferred the offsets onto some 18mm untreated construction ply I had laying around then cut out the stations. All apart from the front cockpit station (3) and the one ahead of that (2) I beefed up the depth by 1cm more then the plans called for to add strength (some aft ply stations of similar kayaks have broken). 2 and 3 were left according to plans so that I could fit into them.

A strongback was made up from the remains of the one used for Kekeno. To save money on the coach bolts I just clamped the pieces together - this worked fairly well but wouldn't do it with a stripper that requires a lengthy period of time on the strongback.the made up a strongback from the remains of the one used for Kekeno. This worked fairly well but wouldn't do it with a stripper that requires a lengthy period of time on the strongback. After ripping my remaining board of Western Red Cedar into gunwales and scarfing them together I realised that I had badly underestimated the amount of wood I had. WRC is impossible to get on the island but I found some nice Rimu moldings just the right thickness and 6m long at the local Timber World. $50 saw me with more then I needed. The 8 stations were sanded down and stained for aesthetics. If I was covering with a coloured fabric then a quick sand and a coat of epoxy would have done them. After that it was a simple matter of measuring out on the strongback where the stations go, mounting station 1 and 8 on to it and inserting the keel "moulding" into them. The other stations just sit on top of the keel and the chines and gunwales held in place with a couple of bungies.

Once I was happy with the shape I
glued it all together with thickened epoxy and "clamped" it with cable ties until the epoxy set. The deck stringers where next, I wasn't fond of how traditional kayaks had these stringers end suddenly after what would be station 3 and 6 so these were continued right up to the bow and stern until they naturally met with the gunwales and planed to fit.

Next job was to peg all the joins in case the epoxy wasn't up to the job. Since it was starting to get cold and windy outside I removed the yak from the strongback and brought it into the lounge to work on over the week. Instead of buying a length of dowel I used some kebab skewers from the pantry and glued them in with Gorilla glue. Just finished all the drilling and pegging tonight, so taking a break and will get stuck into sanding the frame tomorrow. One word sums up this ultra low volume yak - Sleek! I tried it for fit when I removed it from the strongback and I can only just get in. This is one kayak where the saying "You don't sit in it - you wear it" is taken to the extreme.