Chris

hee hee hee, too funny! I'm checking in via $atellite from out here at Two Harbors, Catalina. The mist is just burning off out here and its promising to be a sunny day. Later we're going for a hike onshore I think.

: Don't do this, Puppet. This is a Leper Colony and they all say the same thing
: about boat building. Starting down this path is like lowering yourself
: into the exhaust vent over a restaurant's broiler; it's a one way journey
: with no help till the weekend's over.

How's this for the daily movie quote:
"Listen, Mac, we're all dirty, but I'm the leper with the most fingers."
-Jack Nicholson, in the movie "The Two Jakes"

: Whoa, help Mr. Wizard, uh, Nick. Maybe Mike is on line. He's been building a
: carbonized version of this boat and should know the answer to this one.

Well, I've been fortunate enough to paddle a couple stipper Night Heron's and they are sprightly and fast kayaks with nice secondary. I left the SG Night Heron as a deck and a hull ready for joining, not yet in the water. Still, I've designed and built 4 sea yaks and I think I got an idea what a yak will do by staring at the hull from every angle. In my humble opinion, it looks like the SG NH will be twitchy in primary but extended secondary stability. Twitchy primary to me is a positive feature, but what do I know.

First, the front bulkhead will be angled at 15 degrees angled forward at the top. We had estimated the approximate position of the front bulkhead for Dave, who is 5 foot 9 inches, 170 pounds, inseam 32 inches, with size 9 feet. I've looked at the positioning extended to a 6 foot person with an inseam of 34 inches, feet on a 1 inch thick stiff minicell foam layer atop the front bulkhead. A size 11 foot (or me with my 3 mm dive boots on) would fit easily into the space with the ability to use the planned center area for positioning a Bosworth Guzzler 450S foot pump. There's a surprising amount of space stuck in the design.

Now on the larger person and size 13 feet, that's for Nick to answer, I have no idea or answer to that whatsoever. All I can say is what we looked at and considered.

Now onto the idea of weekend trips. There's a lot of space in the NH for multi-week trips BUT the hatches on the plans are way way too small for putting gear into the yak, and for reaching gear in the ends. You must redesign the hatches for putting in the largest anticipated item for that compartment. Every rear hatch has been designed around a Polargaurd 0 degree sleeping bag in it's stuff sack, but flow in the yak's lines. The front hatch is made 1 inch smaller in long dimension, but fit within the front deck position. The lateral lines for both rear and front hatch is 1.25 inches in from the edge of the deck, 3 inches aft of the rear bulkhead or 3 inches forward of the front bulkhead, then dimensioned as described above.
A word about hatch gaskets: I designed the hatch to have a gasket support shelf that is 1 inch wide to allow for a commonly available 1/4 inch thick rubber gasket avaliable at Lowe's, Home Depot, Dixieline, and smashes down to 1/8 inch. This means that a 1/8 inch thick ply gasket spacer ring was made and is laminated between the deck underside and the gasket support shelf.
Hold-down for the hatch is by 6 evenly spaced s/s 10-24 t-nuts in the underside of the gasket shelf ring (which again is 1 inch wide and extends into the hatch opening so that the hatch is supported on a 1 inch thick shelf). There will be Phillipine mahogany nuts with 1.25 long 10-24 s/s studs which screw down the hatch through holes in the hatch into the t-nuts, pressing the hatch firmly onto the gasket. We considered other ideas to hold the hatches down but the easiest proven design was this one.
The nifty feature is that we incorporated the famous Chris O Patented Internal skeg/stern rub strip attachment strip. When we get back I'll send you the images.