: 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.

Actually the scantlings (sizes) of Tom's (Yost) boats are at about the minimum you can use and have a safe boat. Making them lighter really isn't all that great of an idea. They are still very light, my long Sea Ranger with a heavy 6 ounce glass skin over Dacron only weighs 34 lbs. and that's with 3/4" plywood frames because I misread Tom's instructions for the first boat, could lose probably 5 lbs. from that. That boat's almost 19' long btw. Built with 1/2" okoume frames and WRC stringers with a light cover (even my glass one) and you'd easily have a boat in the high 20 lb. range, that's pretty light :)

I most certainly understand the feeling of just how light the SOF's are, specially compared to some of my heavy boats :)

Bill H.