Ten more days into the new year, and the boat status is still… near complete! Some more failures and the holidays are so long, every stores is closed so I can not purchase some necessary materials. Anyway, here’s the progress so far… Finish molding the silicone gaskets, now I used a harder type of silicone (A25) instead of soft epoxy! The gaskets create a very tight brace indeed, you have to push a bit for the rims to fit into the U – shaped gaskets which embrace 3 sides of the rims! The hatches’ caps will be secured to the boat deck (on the internal side) with short pieces of paracord. Explaining to other peoples: the paracords prevent losing the caps accidentally!

Explaining to myself: since the hatches, caps, rims and gaskets are all built by hand, there’re some small cutting, gluing, molding errors. So if you rotate the caps the other way around, they won’t fit properly to the gaskets, the paracords mark which end should the rims and gaskets go together! The hatches’ rims are bolted with small 3.5 mm bolts to the deck (with supporting stringers on the internal side). This way, if somehow the rims are broken or damaged, they can be pulled out for repaired, or replaced. Also, I’ve finished building the compass cup! The compass cup is made from… paper, I just use a long roll of paper, wrap around a round cylinder after soaking it with epoxy.

Once eopxy cured, the paper roll is harder than plywood, and since the cup sits inside the deck, protected from water, that’s good enough! Also, I’ve carefully drilled a small hole in the compass and inserted a small white LED bulb (the compass I could find here with built-in lighting is too big for my kayak). The compass cup is secured to the deck with 3 copper bolts (most steel bolts are ferromagnetic, and they will affect the compass heading given their very closed proximity to the compass’ magnet). This way, the compass cup can easily be detached for repair / replace later on). Also, I’ve finished building the rudder, and 2 new LED bulbs.

The hull is given 2 layers of gelcoat already, a topcoat would come next! All of a sudden, the temperature in Saigon drops to just below 20 Celsius for the last few days, which is a quite strange indeed. So the gelcoat tooks longer to cure, I have to leave it overnight for each coat. For all these 2 – components chemical things (epoxy, gelcoat, PU paint, silicone, etc…), they do not “dry” like paint, they’re real chemical reactions. So, temperature and humidity have great effects on the curing process, and sometimes it just fails “for no obvious reason” (actually, some certain combination of environmental factors that we don’t fully understand). There’re quite some more jobs to be done to finish this building…

Work until the last days of the (Lunar) year, progress has stagnated recently. A setback in building progress, I hoped I could finish the whole boat within the old year, but when molding the hatches’ gaskets, the (soft) epoxy just didn’t cure, maybe because I’ve been storing it for more than 2 years, its “shelf-life” has ended, or maybe another reason I don’t know, have serious doubts about the quality of every materials here in VN! Materials’ qualities are important, cause if they’re not upto the “standards”, then most of the time, instead of building, you would just “fix this, fix that”, problems that arise during the progress, it adds much more time to the building, which is already labour-intensive.

For the epoxy, it would be a total mess if epoxy doesn’t cure properly, the best scenario is you can somehow, scrap the whole jelly, sticky thing away and the worse case is that: all you’re working on has to be thrown away (and building new ones). And I’m building 2 completely new hatches! Well, I’m used to it already, sometimes, a simple task has to be done 2 times to be right! And since all stores is closed down during these 10 days of holiday, lots of building jobs have to be postponed! So I take this time and slow down all the building steps, and maybe launch the kayak without some not-too-important details, and finish it later on after the holidays when all the stores are opened again!

The deck part would receive 3 protecting layers: 1 epoxy layer, 1 gelcoat layer and 1 topcoat (PU paint) (not counting an initial layer of coloring wax), the bottom part has 5: 2 layers of epoxy, 2 layers of gelcoat, and 1 topcoat. As proven in the previous build, gelcoat is really great: hard, durable, not easy to scratch. The thin topcoat layer is just for the gelcoat to cure properly, as the gelcoat I’ve purchased is not pre-mixed with wax (wax is required to protect the gelcoat from making contact with air, it can only cure properly without air). Then building and fitting the rudder, then fitting the bilge pump, light bulbs and the battery box, fit the compass and those bungee cords, various details to be done!

Sometimes, I did re-use some components from a previous build, well, I did reuse the bilge-pump (leave it in the old boat and it would just rot away anyway for no good). But I really hate having to “cannibal” an old boat to get the parts for the new one, it would leave your boat collection… incomplete. But that also means I would have to build a lot of things, a new build is surely better then an old one, after some times of practical uses in real-world, you would come up with new ideas, new designs. As for this build, the battery box, the compass and bilge pump, the rudder, the hatches (caps and rims) are all improved, they’re built in a way that they can be easily swapped out for repair or upgrade later on!

First part is about the general design, now the second part! First, putty-ing… till perfection. Share a tip on how to make a good putty joint between boat’s bilges. Apply the wood-flour-thickened-epoxy at the seam, pay attention to the mixture’s viscosity, too thin it will sag, too thick it will be difficult to work. Spread the putty into a curvy surface, then apply a layer of duct-tape over the seam (choose the thick, cloth based tape, don’t use the thin, nylon one, the thick holds shape better), then using a foam-roller to roll over. When epoxy cured, peal the duct-tape off, you would have a very smooth surface, a perfect blending between the hard-chine bilges, so that glassing would be easier later on.

Next is about glassing, I prefer to use a foam-roller to apply epoxy over the fiberglass surface, but sometimes, the epoxy is too thick (it could be that I’ve accidentally bought the batch of epoxy from the bottom of the vendor’s large container), its viscosity is too high, too “dense” for the roller to move smoothly. If it’s the case, mix with some thinner solvent. I’ve always found xylene works best, much better than acetone. But also be careful, don’t add more then 10% (by weight), or the cured glass would be weakened. After building those many boats, my glassing skills (if it could be called so) has become very good, almost no bubbles, no sagging… The result is just pure, smooth glass, very satisfying!

A lesson learnt from the previous build, the 2 hatches now have some stringers to support underneath, cause just a 4mm plywood deck would bend over time and under load. With this support, the hatches’ rims would stay in shape and help keeping a tight fit. After lots of “brainstorming”, I’ve decided to mold the water-proof gaskets from… epoxy, not the type of hard-epoxy commonly used for boat-building, but a softer, bendable one. The stiffness of the material used for gaskets is important: too hard and it won’t brace well to the rim, too soft and it could deform over times. Although I believe this is the best “hatch solution” (rim + lid + gasket + lock) I’ve found out so far, only real-world tests will tell!

There’re so many miscellaneous, time-consuming jobs not described here: running the rudder control lines, attaching the rudder pedals (I reuse those of a previous build to save time), running the electric lines under the deck, trimming the bilges outer joints, adding an additional protecting layer of glass at the boat’s two ends, building the rudder parts (the rudder will be fastened by rope to the rudder post, like that of a Wharram cat), building the cockpit coaming, preparing mounting points for the compass and bilge pump, etc… before the hull & deck parts could be joined together. I hope I could finish this build before Tết holidays (Vietnamese Lunar new year), but a few days delay would be just fine!

Just write some brief descriptions, not elaborate into details about building my new boat: Serenity-2. It’s already the 7th kayak that I’ve built, there’s not much new things to talk about, the same steps, the same techniques. First is about the design, a 15.5′ hull, in addition to a very curvy shape, turns into something I’ve found comfortable when having to ride waves, though speed in a long run wouldn’t be best for sure! The boat is not built for surfing neither, I just feel the need for some controllability when caught in gales which happen very often during the monsoon season here in VN! Those gales could be mild, but sometimes it could bring much troubles with waves in exceeding 1m in height!

The quite narrow (50 cm), deeep-V, curvy hull with lots of rocker offers a good ride in turbulences, but it also comes with an inherent weakness, the Cb (block coefficient) is only 0.36, that’s why I added a built-in skeg to help with directional stability! The skeg is built into the bottom-aft section, protruding 10cm under the hull, about 1m long, and going all the way into the rudder post! The rudder is meant to be auxiliary, its small blade (8 x 40cm) is deployed only under unfavorable conditions! Normally, I would prefer to paddle with the rudder retracted! Designed Cp (Prismatic coefficient) is around 0.5 when fully loaded, which signifies that this is clearly a touring boat, with the maximum load at 155kg.

155kg seems to be a big number, but me myself is already 77kg, plus the boat final weight would be around 27kg (it’s sturdily built for “expeditions”), so you could carry less than 50kg of provisions! Paddling in tropical climate consumes lots of fresh water, I usually carry onboard about 20~22 liters, enough for 5~6 days. For trips longer than a week, obviously I would need to plan a stop somewhere to replenish the water supply! Luckily (or unluckily), VN is a extremely-over-populated country, it’s quite easy to make stops along the shores to seek for goods, foods, and other services! With experiences from the previous built, Serenity-2 is slightly re-designed to be easier to roll, with a less full deck!

Believe me, being able to roll is a huge psychological aid, though I also think it’s rarely needed in reality, unless you do rock-n-roll! During those long hours of paddling, you would waste a fair share of your metal energy to read the tides, the weather, making estimations, predictions, decisions, propose to yourself plan A, plan B, etc… lots of uncertainties, anxieties and procrastinations. Having some more skills in your techniques-bag makes much differences and boost the tenacity very much needed to complete those long mileage! Plus, all my past and future trips would be all alone, there’s just me, so I have to prepare for any situations by myself, would need to spend some effort horning my rolling skills!