: I can give you several practical reasons for a light boat. Line up 6 boats
: that perform equally well...yet one is 20 pounds lighter. That's the one
: everybody will want to load, unload. The light boat will get used more
: than the others. And, notwithstanding the weight of equipment and paddler,
: the lighter boat will usually be more manouverable and easier to handle.
: Another reason I'm fixing to build a very light, very strong S&G is
: because of about 30 possible portages in the 262 mile Texas Water Safari
: next year. The strip built I'm just about finished with, at about 50
: pounds, is going to be way too heavy for this old man with bad knees.

I agree completely. My dad and I built two SOF but skinned them using fiberglass/PE resin and they went from being very light frames to very heavy boats in no time flat. I do not recall what weight weave we used, but I know we did not spare any resin on filling the weave (not knowing any better). They were really nice kayaks in the water, but it took two people to carry one kayak. Had we covered those kayaks differently (i.e. coated canvas/nylon/polyester), I am positive that they would have been a whole lot lighter.

I was heavy then, but nowhere near as heavy as I am now. Yes, you can build a lighter kayak if you are not a heavy paddler, as I am and therefore my next kayak build will be larger than most one person kayaks are (I am planning on the 15' x 30" BK22[?] plans sold by Clark Craft). At least when it comes to SOF, I do not believe that a shorter, narrower kayak will save that much weight, just from reading the different lists, I conclude that most one person SOF kayaks tend to weigh in the 25#, on the small side, to 40# on the large side, range. I do not have any experience with Strip or S&G and since I am not inclined to build a kayak using either method, I have not paid attention to the average weight range of either. I do plan on building a strip Wee Lassie canoe based on the plans in Featherweight Boatbuilding, in the future, and the author mentions that one of the designs is approx. 35#, but I do not know if that is the larger canoe or the smaller canoe.

Good luck,
Paul