Well, it’s finally happening, I started work on a kayak design specifically aimed at 275 to 300 lb paddlers.
This is a bit tricky because it’s not as simple as just scaling one of my existing designs, I’ve tried that already, and the kayak didn’t perform the same and the hull balance was wrong.
So, even though this has all the same elements as my F1 design, I’ve lengthened the boat and shifted the center of gravity, and made some changes to the scantlings.
While I was doing the layout, Liz asked me how I knew what changes to make and I had to laugh. The reality is, I’m just making educated guesses and then putting boats on the water, trying them, and then, at the end of the design season, I usually have a pile of prototypes in the backyard, and we either have a design or we have to start again next year. Sometimes it takes three or four years to finish the design and sometimes we don’t get there at all!
Here you can see the mortise and tenon joinery for the gunnels. Unlike furniture work these joints are deliberately sloppy to allow for a small amount of flex in the frame, which is fortunate because it makes compound angle, mortise and tenon joinery a lot more approachable for beginners.
The biggest challenge I’m going to face on this design is just finding enough test pilots, because any design evolution requires a ton of testing and I literally can’t test this boat because I’m not big enough. So if you’re in the 275 to 300 pound range and close enough to Portland, Oregon to stop by for a test paddle, please let me know!
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