My builds: Yost Sea Tour 15 EXP, Yost Sea Bee, Yost Sea Rider, and just finished the frame on a 12' Kudzucraft Mess About. The Sea Tour is currently down due to a broken gunwale, dropped when a storage hook failed and it impacted a staircase; sister blocked & repaired, but I really want to replace that gunwale.

My personal history: Built the Sea Rider for the sole purpose of learning how to roll, but I've been unable to mesh schedules with a local instructor for a couple months now. Very tempted to simply have a trusted friend (nobody holding life insurance on me) while I give it a go. Since the Sea Tour has been down, I've been paddling the Sea Rider instead.

That's all fine and dandy, except I've recently been fighting some sort of autoimmune disease (probably rheumatoid arthritis, just haven't been officially diagnosed yet). When it flares up, my hips hurt something horrible in the Sea Tour. Changing my seat position helps for a few paddle strokes, then pain kicks back in. I'm hoping that part of that's due to the positioning of my legs and feet in the Sea Rider... it's a very snug fit. Great for rolling, not so much for changing the angles of my legs & hip joints.

Part of this may be resolved by the medication the doc's got me on... methotrexate. It's supposed to start kicking in 4-6 weeks (I'm on week 5), and not fully for 12 weeks. Could be that I'll be able to sit in that Sea Rider without a problem after a few months of the meds in my system, but quite frankly, I'd like an excuse to build another anyway. Something in between the Sea Rider and Sea Tour. Something decent for day trips and light camping, but doesn't significantly compromise my ability to roll, my comfort, or Greenland paddles (having busted my knuckles a few times on that Sea Tour's gunwales, what with a 23" beam).

I'm thinking of Yost's Nikumi 17'. 21" beam, so the Greenland paddles aren't an issue, and there's a bit more room for my legs to get situated comfortably. Back deck design (flat & level with the gunwales) is allegedly conducive to rolling.

I've got enough workspace in the basement to be able to cut the formers out, but most of the frame building occurs in my side yard. Sewing the hull on may or may not happen in the dining room, depending on what I can cajole the wife into allowing. If (when) I get around to building a workshop in the backyard (requiring code variances, for a variety of reasons), I really want to get a strip build in, but this is going to have to be a skin on frame build in the meanwhile.

Any thoughts or other suggestions?