: Very nice Grant! Can you give us the specs on this beaut? length, width,
: weight? also how about a close up of the deck fittings? I think I've seen
: them before but I'm not sure.

Thanks Kent,
Length overall is 19' 6" (1 foot shorter than our standard Eagle tandem), beam is 26 1/2" ( 1" less). Weight is 60 pounds. Hull is medium toned WR Cedar. It has shaped mahogany shear strips and a mahogany keel strip. The keel strip starts out as 5/8" thick and 3" wide at the center tapering to about 1" wide at the bow and stern. It is shaped to 1/4" thick at the edges and has a coved rolling bevel on both edges for the bottom strips to fit into. Kind of complicated and a pain to make, but looks nice and doesn't add much weight since I hollow out the inside with a round bottom plane before glassing the inside. I had an earlier post a couple months ago on these strips.

The deck end sections are dark, flat grain WR Cedar (as Ross has gone through, a pain to fair. Even after a lot of careful work, the super shiney 2-part clearcoat finish still shows a few slight ripples that could not be detected in the sanded finish. But the grain really looks nice). The center deck section is light WR Cedar. Accent strips separating the two deck colors are basswood/walnut/basswood. A similar but wider accent strip runs along the shearlines. The inlaid "compass rose" is mahogany. The whole deck pattern was designed by the owners.

The cockpits are custom sized. The bow cockpit is 26" by 14" and the stern cockpit is 16" by 29 1/2". They are spaced fairly close together, partly because of the short length of the kayak and the need to balance the differential weight of the two paddlers. Cockpit recesses are dark WR Cedar. The vertical part of the cockpits is a formed lamination of 3mm Okoume ply/6 oz. cloth/mahogany veneer. The cockpit lips are 3 laminations 1/16" mahogany veneer/2 laminations 1/16" maple veneer/4 laminations 1/16" mahogany veneer. The keyhole/knee braces pieces are carved from matched-grain Boire (not sure what that wood really is, I bought a few 2" planks almost 20 years ago).

The deck fittings are our veneer-fiberglass sandwich style done in mahogany. Will look through my photos and post one showing a better view of these. These are set quite low with 1/8" recesses into the deck under them to accomodate lines/bungies.

The carring toggles are polyurethane resin castings of carved deer antler toggles. Ropes run through copper tubing inserts epoxied into the bow and stern holes. The ends of the kayak (about 6") have solid wood blocks inside bedded into thickened epoxy.

Probably more than you wanted to know!

Grant