well...

i was enjoying some autumn paddling in my recently completed night heron strip built....exploring the shore line and i suspect i went over a piece of protruding rebar (noticed large busted up concrete blocks that had been placed as rip-wrap to keep the shore line from eroding).

awful sound....not a clunk.....but like ripping a piece of cloth....and the result was a clean four foot long cut.... the last two feet of which pretty neatly and effectively knifed through a double layer of 6 oz glass all the way to the wood. was doing about 3 knots and the boat did come to a stop....and then worked it off.

paddled it another 3 miles before i got back to my take-out (yes, i was wearing a drysuit....and we stayed towards shore and had my partner making sure i never appeared to be bow-down.)

didn't sink which was a plus.....and i now have the boat drying out and starting to think a bit about the approach for repair.

any thoughts on approach would be appreciated.....am thinking to handle it by widening out the cut to 2 to 3 inches wide and using long strips of glass and just fairing it in. if anybody also has brilliant idea on a more resillient bottom approach, am interested in hearing it. maybe just a freak accident.....and nothing more to learn (from a construction point of view)

picture below.....my advice......don't take your kayak to a knife fight....it hurts.