: Wayne,
: Voyageurs national park has a lot of rocks with paint on them near the
: portages. From the boats that run over them. Rocks are dark water is
: dark.. scrape.... Its a sign of lots of rentals, but it is also warning
: flag. My suggestion would be not only to layer on an extra coat, but to
: stich in an extra layer of fabric under the bow and along the keel. It
: will give your SOF skin some extra durability on the grinding.

: PS you should connect up with John Monfoe. He has is trying something similar
: with a wooden yak and is filled with good ideas.

: !RUSS

Hi Russ,

I don't have any ideas about this, but I would like to mention my experiences with polyurethane. On the first boat I built I varnished the deck and it deteriorated badly over time. I didn't know what a UV was. But then when I built my sailboat,, remembering the trouble I had with varnish I used a 1 part air drying polyurethane on the mast. 10 years later when I sold the boat, the mast still looked very good. I was going to ask the board later when I got to the stage of varnishing, about my experiences that worked so well with polyurethanme. It looks like it would work well in place of varnish on the kayak. But since it isn't used here it makes me shy away from perhaps using it.

John