I am a teacher at a high school in Maine. I'm an advisor for the outing club, and want to get the club involved in sea kayaking. We (the students and a couple teachers) will be building some kayaks for the club to use, and I'm looking for some suggestions on what kind of kayaks we should build. Some things to consider:

*The kayaks will be used on a nearby small lake for training, and on sheltered area's off Maine's coast for weekend camping trips. They will be used by relatively inexperienced kayakers (high school students, most of whom will have zero experience when they first start kayaking with the outing club).

*During Spring vacation we will take over the entire cafeteria for building, so we will have plenty of space. But we will only have one week! We can build small parts before the vacation, but anything that requires a lot of space has to be done during that one vacation week.

*It would be good if we could build folding kayaks, because we are planning a trip to the Sea of Cortez a year from now, and it would be nice if we didn't have to rent kayaks there. But folding kayaks seem too challenging.

*The construction will be paid for by the high school students. Cost is a very big concern. The cheaper, the better.

*Most of the people involved in construction have no building experience. They are intelligent and motivated....but not experienced.

I'm thinking we should build doubles because it seems that taking a group of high school students out in doubles is safer than taking the same group out in singles. I think SOF kayaks are probably better, because we can make a lot of the parts before the vacation starts...and then put it all together during the vacation.

Looking over this site, I am very intrigued by Tom Yost's FAP designs, especially the "Combi" folding double (it would be nice if we had some single kayaks for training purposes, and doubles for weekend camping trips).

So I have basically two question.

1) What kind of kayaks should we build?
2) Are there any specific designs you would recommend?

Arthur Ruff