Hugo:

Thanks for the compliments.

When I cut the hole for the cockpit from my recess, I left some "appendages" that I envisioned would become knee brace locations. I figured I'd just mount some closed-cell foam underneath as I did on a s&g I did a couple years ago.

Then, when preparing to do the coaming lip, I decided to do carbon fiber instead of the wood laminations. At this point the wood strip knee braces could be used as a form for the cf/fiberglass lamination I used to make the coaming lip. I built the riser according to Nick's recommendation in the book, then used the styrofoam insulating board to build a mold for the lip (see the One Ocean Kayaks site for some info on this). I layed out the cf/fg over it all, including the knee brace areas and down the inside of the riser. It was more of an experiment at this point than anything. I tried to wrap the cf/fg laminations of the coaming around the knee brace forms and into the cockpit itself. Of course the stuff didn't want to wrap around the end of a strip, so I just let it hang. If I were to do it again, I would make a similar mold to the one made for the coaming and attach it to the knee brace forms so that the laminations would curve more smoothly down into the underside of the deck/inside of the cockpit. I layed it up one night and popped it off after work the next day. After a little more puddering around with the rest of the boat, I glued the whole thing down to wooden coaming riser. I supposed I could have cut off the knee brace "forms" at this point, but I didn't. When that hardened, I used a ros to make a smooth transition on the underside of the deck.

I'm pleased with the asthetics of it all, but I think I should have made the form for my lip for a bit wider, as my coaming lip came out closer to 1/2" than the 3/4" I was aiming for. I think this was more of a math error on my part (not taking into account the thickness of the riser when making the form).

I'm not sure that was all clear, but if you need more info, I can e-mail pics or whatever you'd like.

Cheers,

Rob