Why build a Cape Falcon kayak or canoe?
Experience, testing, quality, support, and community. We love what we do, connecting people with great kayaks, each other, and sharing our perspective on living richer lives with a lighter footprint on the planet.
Need a little help deciding on which boat to build, check out these quick guides on choosing a kayak or choosing a canoe!
Experience
You learn a few things after 20 years of designing, building, teaching, and paddling. We’ve built over 200 skin on frame boats personally and have taught over 1000 students in person and at least another 1000 through our online courses. This experience allows us to design boats with predictable performance, accurate sizing, and a building system that is much easier than any other type of boatbuilding.
Extensive Testing
Our founder Brian Schulz started out as an aggressive multi-disciplinary kayaker living on the exposed Oregon coastline, where he designed and tested all of our kayaks. A typical testing day started by paddling out through big surf and north along 6 miles of sea cliffs, catching a few fish, and then returning home with a 25 knot wind and 6 foot wind waves on the rear quarter. The idea was if the boats could handle these conditions they could handle anything. Each of our kayak designs went through at least a dozen prototypes before settling on a core concept, and have been further refined in the decades since. More recently, we began designing canoes as well, and the same spirit of design through extensive testing continues.
Quality
Obsessive isn’t a strong enough word to describe our approach to skin boat quality. Whether it’s rebuilding a single prototype 15 times to gain a 10% increase in edge turning performance, developing a liquid keel strip that adds years to the lifespan of the boat, or doing a 1000 hour UV exposure test with 20 different pigments so we can guarantee long term color accuracy, nobody works harder than we do to test new features, reduce weight, increase durability, and boost performance.
Support
When taking our online boatbuilding courses, you are welcome to call, email, or text anytime for advice or feedback. Basically, we’ve got your back throughout the whole building process so you can feel like you are in the classroom, no matter where you are in the world.
Community
One of unexpected benefits of transitioning to an online format is that it has allowed us to grow a global community of builders who can share resources and meet up to go paddling. If you check out our Student Builds page you’ll find blogs from dozens of students who have documented their builds in exchange for a discount on plans. This is a great way to get a sense of other people’s experiences using our building systems. We also have a Cape Falcon Builders Facebook group where active students — and folks just interested to learn more about skin on frame boatbuilding — can connect directly to ask questions and share information.