: 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.

I can only say that I never coat my frames with any sort of waterproofing - though I do oil up the frames of open boats, for looks. It seems to me that your problem may well have stemmed from your wood choices, rather than coating options? I'm just guessing. Glad you weren't paddling when your boat broke in half!
I should note that I do advocate making the aft cockpit frame considerably thicker than Tom Yost's instructions indicate, as this certainly is a high stress area. Tom knows what he's doing, and this could just be overkill (though apparently not in this case....).

Looking forward to seeing your "Chuckanuck!"