: Finally! On Labor Day, we launched two Sea Pup kid kayaks designed by Tom
: Yost. As you may recall, we've been building four of them with father/son
: teams. The boys are all 9 and 10 years old. We started construction on
: August 18th. The frames came together very quickly, ready for skinning
: after three days. Skinning the hulls was fairly time-consuming- a day and
: a half or so. The decks can easily be done in a half a day, and then the
: coamings, the trim, the footbraces, the deck rigging, the gunwale rub
: strips... that all probably adds another three days or so. I suppose eight
: full days is pretty realistic. I'm sure I could do another one faster,
: now. We spent a fair amount of time scratching our heads over the little
: details. The boys did a terrific job, although to be realistic, the vast
: majority of the work was done by the dads. It's pretty difficult
: (especially for perfectionistic control-freaks like yours truly) to let
: the boys 'mess it up', but of course it's more important to keep them
: meaningfully involved. The little imperfections don't bother the kids much
: at all, and as long as it looks okay and floats and goes- that's all that
: really matters. Of course frequently the boys would rather just go play
: than work on the boats. A lot of the carpentry can be done by the boys,
: and when putting on the skin, the dads can do the tensioning, and the boys
: can do the stapling. (speaking of staples, we used 1/4"long Monel
: (like stainless) available at our local Home Depot, and we bought an
: electric stapler...there are about 1,000 staples in each boat!) It's been
: a great project, and the results are truly excellent.

: The launching went great. These boats handle beautifully, and at 23 pounds,
: they're a pleasure to move around. They seem very fast, and track and
: maneuver extremely well. Although I would prefer a slightly larger boat
: for myself, I'm actually quite comfortable in the boat, and felt
: surprisingly stable. A pleasure to paddle. I think the upper end for this
: boat would be about 5'9", as my legs (I'm 5'7") didn't have much
: more room in front of them. The other launching dad, Dave, at 6'2",
: was able to get in by putting his feet through the next station frame, but
: he's just too big, and was extremely unstable.

: Oh yeah, the kids! My son Calder loves it. We went on quite a long paddle,
: and he did very well. I have to work on the padding and the seat a bit,
: but otherwise, it's great. Poor Captain Joel, Dave's son. A few days ago
: he hurt his arm jumping off Calder's bunk bed, so his arm's been in a
: makeshift sling since then. He wasn't going to be stopped by that, though,
: and the result can be seen in the picture. The seven-year-old siblings
: both had a great time in the boats, too.

: Including building the strongbacks and buying the stapler, the boats ended up
: costing about $151 each in materials. A bargain! I like the PVC skin a
: lot, but I'm eager to build one using either nylon or polyester. It was
: nice to skip all the coating, though.

: I can't possibly give enough credit to Tom Yost. The design is excellent, and
: his support all through the project made the whole thing possible. He's a
: tremendous asset to the kayak building community!
What a great project! I bet your kids are so happy.

Tom Yost, my hats off to you for the design.

: If anyone wants to see a bunch of other pics of this project, I'm going to
: put up another posting with a link to our family webpage. It has a photo
: album with lots of pics of the whole project. I've been sort of dumping
: all my pics into the site, so they're not very organized or edited. Too
: busy! Speaking of pictures, the unskinned frame in the pic does not yet
: have its' deck stringers. We put a couple of light stringers in the aft
: deck to support any deck loads, and of course the foredeck ridge. If
: anyone has any questions about the project, don't hesitate to ask. Steve