: It did make the hull extremely stiff. I did it mainly for the
: looks. It really did blow up. I wonder if combining it with a
: layer of glass would help. I remember that Bell Canoe used to
: combine Carbon and Kevlar.

When a rapidly moving object hits a stationary object its energy of motion is converted to energy in the form of force applied over a distance. With very stiff objects that don’t flex much, the shorter distance results in a larger force. I don’t know about diamond but we all know about china plates . . .

In this case the carbon failed catastrophically under tension. I must admit I had no idea this sort of thing could happen. The wood was under compression up to that point, which is a condition that wood handles very well.

Once the carbon had failed the wood survived a complex series of forces when it probably had much higher stresses. There might have been less damage with glass inside instead of carbon, with the glass allowing the wood to share more of the load. Interesting!

I doubt that adding a layer of glass over - or under - the carbon would help in a situation like this; the carbon is so much stiffer than the glass that it would still take virtually the full force and fracture.

They key to mixing materials to share impact load would be the elongation to failure of the various materials. Wood is probably superior in this respect to both glass and carbon so it was protected in a cocoon while the battle rages around it. Without the glass and carbon an all-wood boat may be been ripped apart; we don’t know . . .