Hi folks,
I built the wrong boat for what I like to do. The logical thing to do would be to build another, but time and money put that off a bit into the future. I have a fairly simple idea to possibly make my current boat better suit my needs that I would like more experienced builders and paddlers to confirm or discredit. I built the Greenland Deck Night Heron below. It's great for rolling and flat water paddling, but, as I have pointed out in other posts, its handling in rough water has something to be desired. I'm on the light side, 150lbs (155 when I'm sporting a cute potbelly), yet my decks are frequently awash in waves as small at 18"-2'. This has the effect of greatly increasing the drag and it feels like someone is applying the brakes just when I'm trying to grab a rush of speed. Another effect of being awash is the decrease in stability as water shifts from running off one side of the flat deck to another. This means that downwind runs that should be an absolute blast really piss me off as work hard to regain lost speed and stability as my high volume boat friends speed on ahead. In retrospect I perhaps should have built the high-deck version of the Night Heron, which bring me, finally, to my idea. I don't want to completely rebuild the deck---I've got a lot of time in cockpit recesses, inlays, etc. If I'm going to go to that much work I definitely should just build another boat. But what if I cut the deck off and set it aside, raise the shearline by adding an inch or so of strips straight up on the hull, then re-attach the deck? The result will add lots of volume but doesn't address the deck shape issue, so whether this is worth the effort or not depends upon how much of the current problem is caused by lack of volume as opposed to the shape of the deck (I'm assuming the flat deck allows water breaking down overtop to apply much more downward force to bury the boat and also requires much more boyancey force to push the deck back up through the water).