: Les,

: Both of your boats are beautiful. I am nearly finished with my
: first boat, which is also a Guillemot. I don't mean to hijack
: your thread, but I would like to know more about the shortened
: version that you built first. Did you reduce everthing
: proportionally (i.e., overall width and deck height) or did you
: just shorten the overall length? When you cut 18 inches from the
: overall lenght, did you also remove one or more station forms,
: or just put them all closer together?

: From your comments it sounds like the performance of the shorter
: version did not change significantly from the original longer
: version.

: I ask because I originally wanted to build my first kayak shorter
: too, I chickened out fearing that it might paddle right. I am
: still thinking about making a shorter one for my second project.

: Thanks for your time.

: Greg N.

Hi Greg.
Firstly feel free to hi-jack, It's what people do on this forum
and what makes it so much fun and so informative.

Now to shortening the Guillemot. Firstly only the length was altered
and I used all of the stations as designed by Nick.

The way I reduced the length, was to start with a 12" space between frames
8 & 9, and then to reduce each successive space fore and aft by 1/4" ie:- 11 3/4"
11 1/2"and so on down to 10 1/4" between 1 & 2 and 15 & 16.
The reason for this approach as I saw it was to preserve the bulk of the bouyancy
and stability of Nick's design but making it more suitable for a smaller paddler.
There were two reasons for this short build.
Firstly, my old garage was too short to build 17ft , and secondly, I only weigh 172lb which
puts me at the bottom of the weight range for the design length boat.
My daughter in law at 120lb finds it superb (her words not mine)

I used internal stems as discussed elswhere on this site but the end forms were re-drawn
10/12 ths of the original lengths. The heights all stayed the same. I think I tweaked a
couple of lines so that the deck curve was less severe, but nothing too serious and done
freehand 'till it looked right to my eye!!!

I have now paddled both boats and can feel no real performance difference, except when
realy pushing for top speed.

Hope this helps. Ask if there are other issues you want answering, or at least my opinion on.

Regards.

Les C.