Made several short paddlings (10, 12 km) to trial my newly – built Serene – 2 kayak. The overall feeling is very pleasing, the boat is much easier to control compared to my previous one Serene – 1, and it’s faster, taking up momentum in just a few light strokes! But the velocity measures would be postponed until I could finish all equippings, all adjustments, and begin longer paddling to know precisely.

Yesterday, I had a capsize in my kayak, reason is that the seat raises the center of gravity (CG) by approximately 5 cm, just a very short distance but severely affect the boat stability. This is something I’d already knew in the designing phase, but still try to do the silly thing of installing the inappropriate seat. The solution is quite simple: remove the seat, just sit barely on the bottom, and build just a back – rest instead.

Apart from that, everything works well enough: the bilge pump, the rudder and rudder pedals, other electrical devices, etc… The shorter hull reacts more sensitively to load balancing, the kayak needs to be trimmed a little bit further aft to reach its most stable point. I’m especially happy with the rudder, to give a decisive conclusion on the Rudder vs. Skeg debate: the Skeg is simply left too far behind to argue!

Only long paddling would tell, if there’re some significant improves in “economical speed”, the important point of a kayak designed for cruising: the minimum effort required to propel the boat on large distance and in prolonged period of time. It takes some more efforts and times to really complete harnessing my Andalusian horse and make it ready for sea paddling trips in this Northern monsoon wind season!

The bilge pump is a critical component of this Serene – 2 kayak. Empty out a flooded boat, or simply make your seat less wet, it gives you lots of confidence and convenience on long paddling trips. Today, I installed the bilge pump with its water hose (through a hole drilled on the port side). Electrical wires are connected and carefully sealed inside plastic tubes with silicone glue to make them really waterproof.

I wouldn’t want the whole system to collapse just because of one leaked electrical wire (anyhow, there’s still the fuse in case of a power surge, e.g: short circuit somewhere). Watch the short video below to see how the bilge pump works, it’s just so great! I would just move a wooden knob (the reed switch), and the water jumps out! The small “buzz, buzz” vibrating sound of the bilge pump is so fascinating!

One problem, however, due to the very deep V – bottom of the kayak, some small amount of water remains still at the bottom which could not be sucked out by the pump. That’s not a big problem anyhow, cause I would install a seat that raises me a few centimeters higher on the floor, and wouldn’t make my pant soaking wet. In the video, the water flow doesn’t look very strong, since the battery is already running low.

I would make more thorough testings to see how the whole system works in combination: battery, solar panel, lights, and bilge pump! But I would wait until the 12V battery “fuel gauge” shipped from Amazon, so that I can have exact measures on the battery usage, how many times it could pump out a boatful of water. It’s important to understand how your system works, so that you could make good uses of them on longer journeys!

The hull is painted with 2 layers of transparent PU paint. In this tropical weather, paint dries so fast, after about 3 or 4 hours, I can start the various deck fittings: mounting the forward hatch with compass on top (and compass light). The electric wires (housing inside a plastic tube) supplying power to the compass light also serves as a holding line, just in the rare case that the hatch could fall out.

The signal light is done the same way, connect the electric wires, seal them inside tube with silicone glue, test if the reed switch work. Until now, all 3 reed switches works well, I shouldn’t worry much about them, as reed switches, though tiny in size (less than 3 mm in diameter), are in fact very durable (rated at 100 000 times of turning on / off). In the silent night, I can hear the click, click sound of them turning on / off.

Fitting the bungee cords is quite straight forward. The anchor points (made from wood) work well enough, I just pull a thread through easily, don’t have to “prime” with a small steel wire like before. The forward bungee cords also run through 2 wooden blocks (see the third image), each house a magnet inside. I use the NdFeB (rare earth) magnets, which are really strong, they could turn on the reed switch 2 or 3 cm away.

Next, I would fit the rudder pedals, run the rudder control lines and see how all things works. Then comes the bilge pump, with the water hose, then the solar panel. The ugly thing is that you just don’t know how much power left in your battery, or if the solar panel is doing its job. So I ordered a “12V battery fuel gauge” from Amazon to read out the current capacity of my SLA battery. Below: a short video to show how the reed switches work!