A couple years back I built a Yost Nikumi with some slight modifications. I made several of the pieces slightly smaller than the design called for and made some other minor changes to the overall length and fitting but I really enjoyed the boat. I made a few posts here regarding my thoughts about it and now I'm back to say my modifications and the fact that I never sealed any of the wood conspired against me.

Saturday I went out for a nice 5 mile paddle with some friends and broke the crosspiece behind the cockpit while re-entering the boat after a lunch break. No biggee, I can fix that. Finish the paddle and load the boat up like normal and begin the drive home. About half-way home the boat broke in half on my car. The bow and stern lines weren't tight so that didn't cause it. I pulled over and readjusted everything so I could finish the drive home. Once home I inspected the boat and found both Gunwhales snapped completely in half and several hull stringers and the keel nearly broken in half as well as a 10 inch section of the front deck stringer broken off.

I'm currently building a slightly scaled down chuckanuck, but this event has definitely made it clear I need to at least seal the wood pieces of the boats. I built the Nikumi specifically as a "temporary" boat and did it in less than 20 hours and it has lasted 2 years now. I will say I expected it to last longer but with the smaller gunwhales, keel, stringers and lack of "waterproofing" it simply was not to be. I will be reusing several of the parts and will build another Nikumi in the nearish future after finishing the retrofit of a strip deck on my S&G and building another greenlander for my daughter. In the meantime I'll take the chuckanuck out with a modified "zip in" single seat cockpit or just paddle it with the big open cockpit. Pictures (I hope) once I figure it all out.

My last comment, after paddling the SOF boats for the last couple years, my hybrid feels like it's made of lead. It only weighs 40 pounds or so and feels ridiculously heavy to me now.