Hello everyone,

Here is a very badly scanned image of my plans for the folding kayak so far. This was done with Ross Leidy's Kayak Foundry program. It is not designed to do hard chines, so I had to manipulate the program a bit to fool it into making hard chines. Of course they are slightly rounded hard chines, but you get the picture.

First off, the scan did not see the image correctly where the bow lines converge and where the section view overlaps the profile, and therefore it made some backwards lines that are not really a true representation, but it looks cool anyway... maybe I'll save that for a stripped deck pattern. However, one thing you can see is the Greenland style skeg. Talk about manipulating Kayak Foundry. To make it draw the skeg I had to move the hull control for the bow to the center, and use the center control to make the curve for the stern, and the sternmost control I pulled way down to make the skeg. Pretty cool looking.

I should mention that I am not happy with the needlenose bow. I think Jay Babina was the one who inspired that, but I'm not sure. Of course I know the idea is probably 2,000 years old, but I saw one of Jay's kayaks with a really pulled in bow, and liked that. Now I'm thinking I pulled it in too much. Also I'm sitting here now looking at the profile view and thinking I should definately scoot that cockpit back a bit. Agree?

Sorry, I left the disk at work, so no hydrostatic data. My printer is out, so I took it to work to print. Also at work I have the Beta 1 version, so I could not exaggerate the hull to fine-tune it, so this is just a preliminary viewing. The masterpiece is yet to come.

I'm very happy with the profile view. I put a good bit of rocker, and a lot of volume in the bow, especially above the water line, so that she would ride over the swells. I flattened the aft deck out, but left some rocker to the sheer, and I lowered the coaming to the deck in the rear. I doubt any water will puddle on this sprayskirt!

For those of you using Kayak Foundry and want to harden up the chine, the way to do it is to go to the "active section" view, and pull the red control all the way down, and the orange control that makes the curvature all the way to the left. Also if you flatten the deck it will give a nice hard chine at the sheer. You can go to the volume distribution and pull it in to make the bow and stern concave. This will help in this design since it's going to be skinned. I will actually cut the forms a little concave between each stringer so they don't interfere with the skin.

Well, still in the design stages. Now it is your turn. I AM AN AMATEUR. Don't assume I know what I'm doing. If you see a potential disaster or a little screwup let me know now before I spend all the money putting her together.

I would really like to hear if you think this hull shape will be too tippy. I left it fairly wide and a bit flatter at the center, but I tried to pull the bow and stern in concave. It has a good bit of vertical hull panel in the water. The waterline would fall just a few inches below the sheer on the aft deck.

I really wanted more chines, but for a folder, and especially a first folder, this will be easier to do. Those of you that know your stuff, look at the aft section of the plan view. Notice that the lines are rather angular. Is that going to be a problem? You will notice a very strong keel line, even before the skeg. I figured since this will be a graphite and carbon yak it will be very succeptable to weathercocking, and I tried to get plenty of backbone in the water to keep her straight.

Okay, you can look at the picture now.....