The shearwater will be my first non-laminated, inner and outer curved keel. These have to match perfectly and I didn’t love the idea of cutting one and then scribing the line onto the other and then praying that I could follow that same line to within a 64th. So here I am doing an...
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Skin on Frame Shearwater build, Day 3
Skin on Frame Shearwater build, Day 3, 4hrs Today we laminated the two intermediate frames, which is a process you’ve already seen, so I figured why not use this space today to show you what the Shearwater looks like built as designed out of glue lap plywood. This particular Shearwater was built by Bill...
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Timelapse: Shearwater stem and frame laminations
Sound on! As long as I have the forms for the shearwater set up on my work tables, I figured I might as well laminate up a second set of stems and frames in case I ever want to build another one. So that brings me up to 10 large laminations, which has really...
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Video: Skin on Frame Shearwater build, Day 2
Skin on Frame Shearwater build Day 2, 3.5hrs Today’s lamination went really well. I used West System epoxy with the 207 hardener which gave us plenty of open time in the 100 degree heat. This is my first time working with West system and it’s definitely more expensive, but I really like the pumps...
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Video: Skin on Frame Shearwater build, Day 1
Day 1, Skin on Frame Shearwater build. 5hrs I can’t tell you how happy I am to be starting a new design project! (unfortunately most of my time is spent doing administrative stuff for the business) I’ve built a handful of rowing and sailing boats in the past but I’ve never been able to...
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Video: Last day surveying boats
Last day surveying boats before I get to start the row/sail project! ___ This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed. See the original post and discussion here. Follow Cape Falcon Kayak on Instagram »...
Video: Surveying our West Greenland kayak
As long as I’ve got two brand new layout tables for the upcoming dinghy build, I thought I’d take advantage of them to survey the new West Greenland kayak that I designed a couple years ago. Unlike our previous boats, which were exact copies of museum specimens, for this boat I allowed myself to...
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Video: Final boat test before we leave for Mexico
Final boat test before we leave for Mexico. Here I am testing some foam saddles that I made to level out the outrigger and yet another pair of rudder blades. I’m still not 100% satisfied with the steering situation, part of which is the boat and the other part is the rudder blade. The...
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On YouTube: The Pedal Drive Canoe system is officially released!
The Pedal Drive Canoe system is officially released! This was a LOT more work than I expected but hopefully it will help people that can’t use a canoe paddle for whatever reason get back on the water in a canoe. In this YouTube video, I show you how the system works and go into...
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Video: Transforming the pedal drive canoe back to a “regular” canoe
Here we are transforming the pedal drive canoe back into an ordinary canoe. The finished results ends up about 3 pounds heavier than the same canoe without pedal drive capability, which isn’t too bad. In the original prototype all these parts collectively weighed about 5 pounds more, so we’re definitely making progress. ___ This...
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Revisiting upwind skin-on-frame sailing
Over the years I’’ve built a handful of skin on frame upwind sailboats, and they worked fine, but at the end of the day I still think that plywood is the better material for the job because it’s stiffer, heavier, and you can build in watertight bulkheads. It’s also just a better match for...
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Video: Running whitewater in a skin-on-frame kayak
…continued from yesterday’s post: what makes this kayak different than the old longer whitewater kayaks and most newer crossover kayaks is that the paddler sits significantly back from center and the volume of the kayak below the water line is pushed back as well to keep things balanced on the water. This is shaping...
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One of the worst boats I ever built
One of the worst boats I ever built was this 20 foot long outrigger sailing canoe. I can’t say enough bad things about this boat. It was heavy, it took forever to set up, it paddled terrible, sailed even worse, and the outrigger leaked. At the time I was living on the open coast,...
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Doing some surgery on the pedal drive box for the next round of testing
The next step for the Pedal Drive Canoe is to test it with all of the available “flipper” drives and a few different fin sizes. I already bought the standard Hobie Drive and also a cheap knock off of their older design, so this week I pulled the trigger ($1080 ouch) on the Hobie...
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Next steps for the pedal-drive canoe
Let’s talk about the next steps for the drive canoe: Right now the plan is to spend the next two weeks testing and upgrading the prototype with and without the drive installed. I need to purchase the Hobie reversible drive with turbo fins to try both of those features and modify the drive box...
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