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Inescapable Otherness

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Builders Notes

About Performance of the Boat

5/21/23 Put the board on the water for the first time. First the good news. It carries my weight (275 lbs.) quite capably and is fairly easy to manuever in the water. It has great secondary stability but not great initial stability (I'm a bit surprised by this). My Flycraft Stealth, which is essentially a thin drop stitched inflatable SUP with a raft wrapped around it is a dock compared to this. I can fish it standing all day and never worry about balance. I planned on strapping a cooler to this SUP as a raised seat and a fore/aft brace for my legs. On this first outing without it I could not stay standing. I'll see what happens with the cooler and some additional practice when the water temps rise a bit more. If that doesn't work I'll think about building some detachable 'old fart' outriggers.

About the Construction

Time and Experience of Building - I undertook this project just to see if I could do it. It kept me occupied much of the winter months and that was great. This was no weekend build. I put many hours over many weeks into it. Counting them would have been counterproductive to my goals. I learned alot and feel I could do a much more successful boat build in the future with this practice project under my belt (I still have my eye on Warren Messer's little 9' FlyCaster pram).

Money - Total cost for materials, tools and basic accessories (like a decent paddle) was over $1500. I might have saved 10% or so if I'd been working from prepared plans and had a better handle on quantities required. I missed some savings by purchasing smaller amounts (particularly for fairing, glassing, and painting) than I should have and then having to reorder. If budget is an issue for you, look for a used Live Watersports L2 or L4. It will be a steal compared to time and money I have in this project. One the other hand, the first person who saw my build at the launch site said, "now there's a boat." Good compensation even if he didn't know what he was talking about.

Building Method - People who build boats frequently complain about the amount of time it takes to finish one and make it look decent. I see a lot of remarks like "I just wanted to get it done and go fishing." Working with pink insulation foam as a core material really added to this aspect of the work. In the beginning I wanted to build the pontoons stitch and glue but I could never find a software (that I was capable of using) that would allow me to approximate the desired hull shape and then get a flat dimensioned projection of the pieces so I could cut them out. About 3/4 of the way through the build I realized if I had drawn 3 more intermediate station sections I could have built a jig and used the wood strip build method. That would have provided better shape control, a solid substate to finish out, and better strength. The major problems I see with the soft foam core are these:

1) it's tricky to control the shape of the hulls well as you carve them out

2) that means a lot of time and material expense filling and fairing the unevenness that results

3) because the core is soft you never get done chasing the imperfections - maybe an experienced auto bodyworker could do it well, but its tough to sand the filler material without continually worrying away your core

4) I was concerned about weight (I would guess the finished weight to be 30 to 35 pounds. It's easy to pick up and carry by the handle one handed). But saving weight by not adding more layers of glass fabric means I am a bit concerned on the durability front. It won't sink like a ruptured single chamber inflatable SUP, but I'm not sure I won't be doing repairs to boo boos in the future

5) at all cost avoid adhesives that off gas when gluing up the blanks. Besides being impossible to tool, the paneling adhesive I used to lay up the hull blanks does off gas. I think this led to some problems with blistering when I was laying up the glass. I'd look at my finished work and everything looked well wetted out with the excess resin removed. Then I'd come back to bubbles in the surface that had to be repaired before moving ahead - PIA.

The hacks on YouTube making quick and dirty foam kayaks with "poor man's fiberglass' are not all wrong. I think pink foam and canvas soaked in latex paint deserve each other. Lowered the expectations of the finished appearance and getting it done much more economically has its merits. Still, I would not change my choices because I learned how to work with a whole new palette of materials. The various products from Total Boat that I used were great for my level of skill and experience.

Taking it all into account I have no regrets and would consider a new project for next winter if I'm not too busy putting this one to use somewhere warm and sunny.

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