Your kayak looks good. What kind of wood and how thick of strips did you build her with? And you like the way she handles?

John VB

Thank you very much! All strips aere 3mm thick. The hull and deck are predominantly western red cedar with a Paulownia water line strip and shear line strip. The cockpit recess, riser and combing lip are northern white cedar. It was sort of a "finish up the woods" I had in the shop boat.

It was my second go at the Guillemot L. The first time I used 1/4" cove and bead. Consequently I was not able to make the strips comply with concave re-curves of the hull in the bow and stern. That boat has very poor directional stability without the skeg. The thinner strips allowed me to conform to the designed hull shape and has much better directional stability even without the skeg down. I really like the volume and look of the boat. I also like the relatively flat bottom, which allows me to have a stable and secure platform when I am concentrating on the view through a camera lens.

I gave it a very pronounced cockpit recess, to aid layback Eskimo rolls. It drops the rear cockpit lip to 7" from the bilge.