serene – 1, part 13

arved and installed two wood blocks at the two ends to drill holes for the pulling knots (to further save weight, I won’t pour epoxy into the two tips, just the wood blocks with some sealing putty), sanding the cockpit coaming, glassing the lashing lines’ anchor points built into the hull, some more miscellaneous jobs before I can dry – fitting the hull and deck together. In the next couple of days, we’ll see the boat in its final shape! First two images below: inside and outside of the anchor points.

Cut a slot in the aft deck for the skeg box to get through, then the hull and deck are ready to be jointed together, with just some epoxy (not putty) applied to the edges. The two ends, bow and stern, fit well, I just need duct tapes to press them together. The mid section requires some fastening as the plywood bent and and does not offer a perfect match. Nevertheless, the overall process is smoother compared to my previous boats, and I’m so happy to see the kayak taking on the designed shape!

I spent times going around and around the boat, watching the fruit of my efforts 😀! The hull shape looks very fine to me, the deck shape is quite crude indeed (not as cursive and fine as that of Hello World – 3, since the deck was drawn to be easy to build). But in essence, the lines, size, weight… all gives me a very comfortable and manageable feeling! Just a few more weeks from now and the kayak would be ready for her new life on water, can’t wait any more for that! 😀

Serene – 1 p1
Serene – 1 p2
Serene – 1 p3
Serene – 1 p4

With a flat deck, the kayak wouldn’t be particularly easy to roll, as once ‘turtled’, the deck becomes the bottom, and flat bottom is quite stable and difficult to turn over. So rolling is not a strong point of this design apparently, nor I did had rolling intention in mind!

Admittedly, I haven’t learned and practiced the Eskimo rolling techniques, and I couldn’t do it whatsoever, since my previous boats are too big and too heavy for me to roll. The techniques are in my (long – term) TODO list anyhow, at some points, I will try to master them!