> Pardon my ingorence, but what is a "squirt boat"? -Fred

let me see here... It is a ultra low volume boat that basically is designed to sink..

It is designed so that the hull surface from right to left is shorter than the deck (the same way an airplane wing is longer on the bottom) so when water flows over the top and bottom of the boat it sinks. The deck is heavily contoured to give room for your feet, knees, volume is most in the center.

If i remember right this is because the water(or air) has a longer path over one side, creating lift on the short side. In this case is causes sinking on the hull side. This allows a paddler to do flat water stern and bow squirts, cartwheels on flatwater and on eddlylines. One of the neatest moves is to in the right kind of current sink the boat completly, travel downstream underwater totally amazing the surface boats around you (that's why they call tham mystery moves) a long mystery approaches 45 sec. but most are in the 10-20 sec range.

Due to the obvious stress on the boats, they are traditionally made of several layers of glass and poly and some times kevlar as well. They also have center walls to help prevent crushing.

I hope that gives at least an idea any other questions let me know

Bart