I had a racing program this past year that was rather underwhelming. I joined the New England Canoe and Kayak Racing Association (NECKRA) and attended many of the races in the spring and early summer that are held on rivers in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Clearly the motor was lacking in horsepower, but it quickly became apparent that a sea kayak with 18' waterline length and 23.5" waterline beam cannot compete against an unlimited racing surfski with 21' waterline length and 16" waterline beam. Also, the many twists and turns of our New England racing rivers and the many mark roundings, relegated my stiff tracking, rudderless boats to the wrong horizon.

Hence, late in the summer I decided to build a new boat for next summer’s racing season and considered the compromises. I have some size constraints to my shop that would make a 21' boat very difficult to accommodate. I also considered the different types of race courses we have here. Most feature meandering rivers with some reedy weedy stretches, and most have some tight mark roundings. I finally settled on dimensions for the Sea Kayak Class, the rating system gives me 3 minutes per hour which may make me competitive. I purchased the plans to the Guillemot Mystery. I then converted the drawings into a table of offsets, and entered them into a CAD program called “Autosketch”. This allowed me to stretch and compress the drawings as I saw fit for the particular racing class, for which I am planning. In this manner I expanded the 4” waterline beam to 19 ½” to allow a boat that fits into the Sea Kayak class for the NECKRA river races, and the Fast Sea Kayak class for the Sound Rowers rating system used by the Cape Ann races. I also found the river races to be very flat water and redesigned the bow for less buoyancy, but to shed weeds more effectively. The length of this boat will be 17’ 11 ¾”.

The picture below is flipped to show the bow portion hull side down.

The primary wood for this boat is Paulownia with some WRC. I used three ganged saw blades with blade stabilizers to yield 3/16” strips. The blade diameter is only 6 ½” with a 1/16” kerf, and feeding the stock through a 3 hp tablesaw was facile. I believe this will make adjusting the final racing trim easier.

The hull stripping sequence was a bit different for this boat. The first strip was the waterline rather than the shearline.

A family tragedy interrupted work for several weeks, but I got back to it a week or so ago and put on the final strips for the hull this morning.

I made a rudder this past summer, and need to decide between foot peddles or a tiller.