I’ve never been a big fan of plastic wrapping skin on frame kayaks to test them, because the wrinkles from the wrap and the difference in shape from the water pressure change the performance so much that it really limits what you can learn this way. I can also skin a boat for real nearly as fast as I can wrap it and test it, and also I don’t feel great about dumping even more plastic crap onto the planet.
I would be lying, however, to say that just the frustration of actually wrapping the boat isn’t a big factor here. In the first video here you can see the method I’ve always used with two people wrapping and one person wrestling the bucking boat trying to hold it still.
So that’s how I’ve always done this, but then yesterday after testing a modification and then removing it to compare the difference, my buddy Jared suggested that we wrap it upside down which changed EVERYTHING. Not only was it twice as easy to wrap but it was faster, we used less plastic wrap, less tape, and the wrap came out smooth enough that I could actually get a sense of the speed of the kayak on the water!
Unfortunately the difference in boat feel from the wrap alone negated what I could’ve learned from the comparison test, so tomorrow I’m gonna have to repeat this whole process again with identical wrapping techniques!
So for anyone who’s interested the technique we settled on was to wrap from bow to stern, wrapping 4 inches further on each revolution all the way to the stern and then carefully all the way back to the bow. The sequence is important here to prevent the wrap from peeling up and creating drag. Then a single strip of tape down the keel and the chines and some tape reinforcement around the coaming so I can cut the hole.
I’ll post a paddling video tomorrow.
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