: Can you balance the amount of work involved with building a strip
: kayak (which is a TON) with the fact that it will be too big for
: him at first, then he will outgrow it and it will be small for
: him pretty quickly. Then what do you do with the kayak? A friend
: of mine built a Yost kayak in about 20 hours over two weekends,
: and it's his favorite kayak of three. Even a small strip kayak
: is going to run you 200+ hours, and cost a TON more to build.

: Dan Caouette has a design he calls "Coos Bay" that is
: smaller than a Sea Flea, so you won't even have to compromise on
: size. There is also a kid's kayak design on Harvey Golden's web
: site called "Max's Kayak." If you search this forum
: for Coos Bay you'll come up with that, or if you do a web search
: you'll hit Dan's web site. If you search QajaqUSA you'll run
: across the other, or you can do a web search for Harvey Golden,
: and find it at his site. The lines are there. You can just slip
: a broomstick under the rear deck lines with a couple of pieces
: of pool noodle on either end and voila... removable sponsons.

: m

I too like SOF's (obviously) but once the strips are cut, I can build a simple stripper without messing with the color of the wood pretty quickly, specially if you're not playing with hatches nor bulkheads and if it's a simple design that's easy to strip. Attaching the hull/deck with a sheer strip also speeds the construction. While I can take a gross amount of time playing with wood colors and fancy details, the process doesn't have to be that difficult.

I'll have to try it sometime, a shorter wider stripper might be able to be built in a month or less.

Still it's a heck of alot cheaper to do it SOF.

Bill H.