: I need some opinions (not that there is any shortage here) on
: making a Guillemot with a raises deck to accommodate my size 13
: hoofs. I'm 5'11 and 170lbs so fit the Guillemot from that
: perspective but have these lRge dogs..

: So, here's the plan. I've lofted the forms from Nicks book but made
: some changes to the deck. I raised the height of the form right
: under my feet by adding 1" in vertical height starting at
: the shear and kept the shape otherwise. I also raised the height
: of each form going fore and aft by 3/4", 1/2",
: 1/4" until returning to the plan dimensions.

: So, the questions? Is this the right approach to raise a deck to
: accommodate big feet? Do you think this in height increase will
: make enough difference to give me comfortable foot room? Do you
: think the lines on the boat will look ok with this mod?
: Let me know what you think and what you might do different.

: Bon Beaullieu

Hi Bob,

First i think is to find out how big a space you need for your feet. By far the easiest way to do this is to try on several kayaks at a friendly dealer (even when building a boat, you'll need lots of other stuff and they make more money on that stuff than they do on boats anyway) find a boat that fits then measure the hole too see how big it's gotta be. Otherwise having some help measuring your feet helps alot. Your feet are normally splayed in the boat, heels touching or nearly so and toes out at the outboard corners and are angled forwards (think sitting in your car), so just standing on a bulkhead cutout doesn't tell you much. Next is how you want a boat to feel. Some like to be wedged into a boat with almost no extra space, others like lots of room, this will change as you gain experience btw, you'll like a better fit.

Ok, got the dimmensions needed, next changing a design to make you fit, your question :)

Several ways to do this, I've done it on the boats I've built and even the designer didn't notice till I told them, so can be done and still look like the boat was intended to look. You don't want bumps that weren't intended, while this looks ok to some on a whitewater boat, looks really odd in a sea kayak, specially one intended to look somewhat like a Greenland kayak. On the Guillemot, personally I think I'd just raise the sheer on the whole boat making it deeper, it's got for the most part a very flat sheer over most of the boat only sweeping up at the ends. Adding an inch to the whole boat will just increase the volume. The other way, and with an inch difference at your feet, will change things fairly dramatically, would be to add that inch then tapering it back to normal at the bow and living with the height difference at the front of the cockpit, will have a fairly huge change in height around the cockpit doing this and will be tricky to strip. This can be humped slightly to lower the forward end of the coaming, but you need to use a flexible batten to gauge weather this will look bad or not and to mark the changes, it's not a straight line it's curved so need a batten to draw out the changes so the line is fair.

If this isn't clear, please feel free to ask more :)

Bill H.