Well, for starters, buy a good book on kayak building. You'll need to decide whether to build a Stitch & Glue boat or a Strip-Built boat. For a stitch & glue, I'd recommend buying Chris Kulczycki's "The Kayak Shop", and either build from plans in the book or from plans from Chesapeake Light Craft or Pygmy Boats. For a "stripper", I'd definitely recommend Nick Schade's "The Strip-Built Sea Kayak". There are good designs in there.

Plotting the stations from an offset table would be a great practice in plotting and tables, and really makes all those x's and y's make sense. A stripper would be more work, but will allow a lot more math; a stitch-n-glue boat is less math and less woodwork.

Are you in a middle school? Perhaps your math classes can do all the plotting and planning and then build them in a wood-shop type class.

> Hi! for my sixth grade math classes (who rightfully want to know,
> "why do we gotta learn this?!), I proposed the idea of building a
> kayak, and they loved it!! I started learning how to kayak in Alaska,
> where I taught this last year, and I now teach in my home area of Minturn,
> Colorado (near Vail). Can anyone help me with a great way to make their
> dreams come true? Please e-mail me at kdryan@earthlink.com--thanks!