Just wanted to express my gratitude to Tom Yost and others here who have generously shared their knowledge and experience. From this and a couple other free online resources, my daughter and I built and launched a Yost Sea Pup in about four days. Here's what happened: About a week before our trip to Lake Powell (Utah) this summer, we realized we didn't have enough kayaks for the whole family. I looked over a few kayak plans and my pile of wood scraps in the garage and decided to try to build a Sea Pup to bring along with us. I had to travel for work a couple days during that week, so we really had to hurry.

We used a couple nice fir 2x4s (from my stack in the garage) that I ripped and scarfed into gunwales, chines, and keel. I had scrap plywood of various thicknesses...most of it was low quality with lots of voids. I also had some 15 minute epoxy (for the joints), gorilla glue (for the scarfs), some old marine epoxy (to coat the plywood), and the coating I used on my house porch floor (Sikkens, to coat the stringers). The only thing we had to buy was the skin. There was no time for a proper skin, so we used 20 mil clear vinyl, which our Walmart had for $3 per yard. So the whole boat cost about $15. Oh, we also had to buy some staples and duck tape.

All joints were glued with the 15 minute epoxy, so we didn't need to wait for anything to cure. We did no lashing or pegs at the joints. It still seems bombproof. Unfortunately, we took no pictures during construction, because we were rushing along. It's pretty much built to the instructions. The seat is just a couple plywood panels glued between the keel and each chine. The skin is not glued anywhere. We just stapled it to the stem, stern, and gunwales, and then covered the staples with purple duck tape. It didn't leak a drop.

It's easily handled by my 13 yr old and 10 yr old daughters, with little experience in kayaks. Other kids with no experience have had no trouble. Both girls can carry it by themselves. It did quite well at Lake Powell. Many hours of trouble free use. Due to safety concerns (no float bags, etc.) we did not allow it far from the safety of other boats. We brought a Dyson double baidarka (6.6m) that I built many years ago, and an awful polyethylene rotomolded kayak.

I don't think the clear vinyl will last long on a kid's boat. The kids bring in a lot of sand, which settles between the stringers and skin. This appears to be wearing tiny holes, but it hasn't been a problem yet. We plan to strip the skin, put in some foot braces, floatation bags, and skin it with Dyson Poly.

Peter
Colorado Springs, CO