Hey, All

I raced home after work today and headed straight into the garage to work on the rebuild. My son, Ben, was good enough to BBQ me a thick steak while I worked on the yak. I took only a short break to eat. Man can that boy BBQ a steak. That's why he BBQ's and I don't. I have a really bad habit of watchign Star Trek while BBQing. The kids rebelled against having to digest shoe leather with a little char on both sides so I was voted off the island. I was excited to get going on it because I knew I was close to finally getting the deck rebuilt.

I traced out the remaining deck patches and tied them in. I checked the shape of each piece before and after installation to make sure that I was rebuilding as closely to the original as possible. Already the foredeck in ahead of hte front hatch is lower than it used to be but it still looks pretty good. It may not shed water as well as it used to so I'll have to ensure the hatch cover seals better than before. No worries, I already have that problem figured out.

Once the deck patches were all cut, shaped and installed, I used a coaming that Donnie gave me from his Hybrid Kayak design to trace out the cockpit opening. This frankenyak will be designed so my wife, who has a spinal handicap, will be more easily able to enter and exit the kayak (that would be dry entry/exit ). The Hybrid cockpit opening exposes most of the cockpit of the rebuild (Lightning 17) so I'll have to custom make a spray skirt to fit.

Once the new cockpit opening was traced out I used a dremmel with a cutting bit to carefully cut out the openings for the cockpit and front hatch. I chose to use the dremmel because I couldn't use an aggressive form of cutting without the possibility of damaging my patches and I didn't have a saw that could make such a cut. Unfortunately I wasn't steady enough to get a clean line but I am sure the miracles of sand paper and epoxy can fix things up well enough.

The pictures show each step in the process, thos eare the ones dated October 10, 2003. The next step will be to glue the panels together then remove the ties, fill and fair. Once done, I'll get on with glassing the deck topside then flip the yak over, fill the joints, tape the seams and glass the underside of the deck. I decided to glass the underside fo the deck because with all the patches it just might need a little extra strength. I've decided not to worry about the net weight of the rebuild because it's gonna be a tank anyway. I bet it tracks well empty during storm conditions. I'm hoping to get it wet in November.

Robert N Pruden