The Arctic Tern was my first kayak, and I thought it was too high-volume, so I built an Outer Island. I'm 5'10" and 180#. My O.I. has approximately the same overall dimensions as the Arctic Hawk. Although I haven't camped out of my O.I. yet (shame on me -- I've been meaning to do that for a long time), there is plenty of room for a backpacker's gear.

The Arctic Hawk is a very nice intermediate-to-advanced West Greenland-style kayak. This kit is new, so you won't find many people who have paddled them, although Superior Kayaks have sold completely built ones for something like $4200 for a number of years. I paddled one 2 summers ago at a kayak symposium on Lake Superior. It felt nice and snug, about like my O.I. I remember initial stability was good, but I didn't play around much with final stability at the time (I wasn't a roller back then.)

The $995 price tag seems a little much for a full plywood kit, though, when you compare it to CLC's North Bay, which you can get for under $700 with the hatch kit. For the same price as the Arctic Hawk you can get a hybrid Merganser kit (Eric Schade's design at http://www.shearwater-boats.com) from Newfound Woodworks, which would get you a prettier boat.

Lots of options. It's a tough decision. If you're like the rest of us here, you'll end up wanting to build another boat anyway, so don't fret too much about your decision -- there'll always be another boat to build...

Dean

: Ok, let's just say that I'm going to finally start my kayak building with an
: S&G kit. (Although I'd rather jump into stripping.) I've had my mind
: settled on Pygmy's Arctic Tern until I saw that CLC introduced a new boat
: (actually an established design), the Arctic Hawk. Does anyone have
: experience with the two of these and can offer a comparison? My concern
: about the Tern is that it seems to be a high volume boat, which is not
: what I need. It does come in a 14 foot version I know, but is that too
: small for me? I'm 5'10" and 190 lbs. I'll use it predominantly for
: day tripping and an occasional weekend trip. But after years of
: backpacking I'm conditioned to be a pretty light traveler.