: In Colorado, boating laws require that the owner put his name and address
: inside the boat, even for kayaks. The last thing I want is a thief to know
: my address, so I left that off

Does the law just say "address", or does it specify a particular sort of
address (like those old fashioned postal ones) ? Whenever I fill in a form
which just says "address" it gets an email address. For a purpose like this,
I'd use a unique mailbox (like the name-of-the-kayak@mydomain.co.uk). Mail
to that address would tend to be rare, and show up more than run-of-the-mill
messages to my main mailboxes.

: For the S&G that I am now building, the kit maker provided ID papers and
: advises glassing them onto the boat. As others have said, this is not
: really a theft deterrent; the numbers are small and often placed in hidden
: areas. And a thief could always sand off the info anyway.

An obvious ID that the thief can see may act as a bit of a deterrent - sanding
off a big patch of glass and repairing the damage will require some skill, and
its unlikely that a thief would ask how to do it on this forum :-) Some smaller
well hidden ID would be useful for recovery purposes.

: I am going to
: apply the ID numbers but ALSO will put something unique and obvious on the
: exterior of the kayak. This could be as simple as a name/graphic -- just
: something unique.

Strip builders are fortunate in that almost every boat *is* unique, and most
of us have lots of photographs of our boats to aid identification. Something
so identifiable, and which is of very little use unless it is used in an
inevitably public place is not an obvious target for theft. (Anyone who can
afford a large enough stretch of private water to use a stolen kayak unobserved
is likely to be able to pay someone to build him a boat !). Many of the S+G
boats also have unique veneer inlays or graphics under the glass. These are
the sort of things that make builders feel good about their boats, as well
as providing some unique identification !

Nonetheless, a casual opportunistic thief may not be bright enough to see
that a unique kayak will be hard to fence. That may mean he destroys it when
he can't get rid of it for cash. So some way to lock the thing to your roof
has to be a good idea - it won't stop someone who has set out with the tools
to cut a lock, but maybe that sort of thief will be less likely to destroy
your work, and thus more likely to get caught.

I epoxied in a loop of plastic coated wire to the deck of my first boat,
which makes it easy to lock up. On the second boat, I can get a bike lock
through the fairlead of the towing system, whose bolts are rendered pretty
inaccessible by epoxy.

Andy