Finally, I managed to have some time slots to start the kayak building. Works would be carried out mostly at weekends, and hopefully, the boat could be finished within this year. After much hesitations, procrastinations, and considerations into the very details, I’ve incorporated quite some “innovations” into the final design, as well as some “simplifications” to ease the building process. I “hope” this is also my “last” stitch – and – glue boat, the 6^th of “the fleet”, seems to be a lot already!

The past 2, 3 weeks were spent mostly on reviewing, fine – tuning the design, “rehearse” the overall building techniques and process. This is a design that consumes my brainstorm the most! Many building steps could be done very quick now, as they have been done 5, 6 times already. So I would skip documenting in various parts, as they are all similar as in my previous boats, only to highlight things that are different. First is setting up the molding stations, cut from MDF as usual.

There would be 9 molding stations (female type) for the hull, and only 4 stations for the deck, each positioned 0.6m apart. One of my last changes to the deck was modifying its sides’ “slope” to 45 degrees, the deck would have lots of “flare” in the inverted position, that’s to make rolling easier. Once the boat is up – side – down and the deck becomes the bottom, so a “stable” full – shape deck wouldn’t be good for practicing kayak rolling. And I guess it could give some help to the boat’s windage too.

There’re so many minor improves here and there, and lots of design considerations too, to maximize the usability of the kayak under various real – world conditions. The aft deck is lowered a bit, to facilitate climbing in the cockpit once thrown own by a complete capsize. There’re two deep – water reentry techniques that I was considering possible with this boat design. Wet – reentry has been a shortcoming of previous designs, being too slim and unstable to make an easy access.

This is not a kayak specially tailored for rolling, but Serene – 3 is designed with concerns of balance – brace and rollings in mind. At the moment, I’m not too sure about its capability to roll under full load and heavy sea conditions, but I’m quite confident for its easy recovering in brace actions. Also, the hatches’ design has been reviewed and modified, to improve their water – tight capability, I’m putting great hope in the new gaskets which would be made by silicone molding to accommodate the hatches.

Also, there would be 3 hatches, all big (no small day hatch) to better utilize the internal containing volume. The rudder design is also reviewed and altered, I need lighter pedaling, and quicker overall responsiveness for the rudder actions, a new type of rudder post, new layout for control cabling too. The electronic system would received a bunch of improves in building techniques, decoupling the whole system into several separable components, to make maintenance and repair easier later on.