: She's Beautiful, thanks for posting the photos. The design along the shear is
: indeed a nice touch. I took special note of the very low profile for the
: rear deck. Any comments about that? Also I see you installed a simple fore
: and aft hold downs. Can you comment about them and perhaps explain how the
: 2 lines and the dowels work?

Thanks for the kind words...

The gunwale design was inspired by New Zealand Maori designs. Their Waka's (war canoes) are incredible to see. Great carved bow and stern pieces and carvings all along the gunwales. I spent a year in NZ back in the 1980's and fell in love with Maori arts and crafts. The boat looked too plain after I skinned it. I didn't want anything too fancy, so I settled on this simple design. I made a stamp from some minicell and craft foam and used latex enamel for the ink.

I agonized over leaking deck fittings and finally settled on using stainless steel machine screws and CLC-style webbing padeyes. I drilled the deck line holes before I skinned the boat. In the bow and stern I intalled stainless T-nuts in the gunwales. Near the cockpit I just drilled the holes. After I skinned and painted the boat I used a red-hot nail to melt holes in the skin and then used neoprene washers behind the bolts. Right now the decklines are a work-in-progress as far as materials and lengths are concerned. I may switch to 1/2 or 3/4" webbing in the bow and stern if I can ever find the stuff I bought a few weeks ago. I'm sure I put them in a safe place...

The two deck lines and dowels (actually PVC pipe) behind the cockpit make Greenland-style toggles to hold a paddle with or without a float to for paddle-float re-entries or as an outrigger to help me rest and relax while in the boat. You push the toggles toward the center of the boat (which loosens the deck lines), then put the paddle underneath, then push the toggles towards the gunwales to lock the paddle onto the top of the deck. I have a similar arangement on my Pygmy Artic Tern and it works great. Should be even better with a flat deck.

The low profile rear deck is pretty much what I wanted, but this boat is a design experiment. The Morris design is about a foot shorter than the boat I built. He makes a comment about building a boat that was too short and sinking the rear deck. I made the stern block spacing about an inch wider that the bow, and then used Cunningham's suggestion that the ribs in the front half of the boat be longer to build and Excel spreadsheet to help calculate deck beam placement and rib lengths. I used the Cunningham balance beam method of setting the masik and isserfic(?) placement. The boat floats about as I hoped, but only time will tell if that is really what I need.

I figure I now have my Arctic Tern, my wifes Necky Santa Cruze and this boat to help me figure out the final design for my next SOF, a more traditional Greenland-style kayak. I will probably start it in a week or two so I can have it in time for SSTIKS in June or at least by the time R2K3 comes along in August.