Kayaks!

Now it is October, and since we are putting our kayaks away, my mind has turned to kayaking. Having spent most of my life here, I have realized that Gloucester is a beautiful place to put your kayak in the water and just go for a day, and Dad and I have spent many hours exploring its coast. One year, I took part in Gloucester’s annual Blackburn Challenge, and raced around our island in a kayak that we had built. We have done some kayak camping up in Nova Scotia, Canada (You can see pictures of that trip here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.931377710224889.1073741832.163034613725873&type=3 ), but for the most part, we stick to day trips, either together or with our respective families. (In fact, the first time I took my wife out kayaking, a baby seal jumped up onto the back of her kayak!)

Since we live in such a beautiful place to go kayaking, and enjoy doing it so much, we needed to have our own kayaks, but, being woodworkers, we wanted something a little more aesthetically pleasing than the typical plastic or fiberglass boats you see cruising around Cape Ann. So, when I was 10, Dad found an old book that described how to build a tandem sea-kayak out of thin strips of cedar. This is one of the first major projects that I can remember working on with Dad, and while building it took some time and was somewhat tedious at times for a 10 year old, we’ve put that boat through a lot over the past 16 years, and only now has the time come to retire it. 

The wood that we used for that tandem was beautiful, but the design was something less than gorgeous. It seemed to me to have been designed by someone who looked at it like a canoe with a roof, rather than as a sleek kayak, and over the years it earned the nickname “The Barge”. So, when it came time to build my own single kayak, six or seven years later, Dad and I took a stab at designing it ourselves. The lines of that kayak are quite sleek, but the design could use some serious tweaking for performance… We definitely discovered that we are better at designing furniture than kayaks. 

Finally, when we built Dad’s kayak, we used a design called the Guillemot Expedition. Nick Schade designed it, and it is a beautiful design, both to use and to behold. You can see the Guillemot here, as well as many of his other boats: http://www.clcboats.com/shop/boats/kayak-kits/touring-kayaks/guillemot-expedition-single-strip-built-sea-kayak-kit.html Nick sells both full kits to build the boats and just the designs. We bought the design, and milled out all of our own pieces.

We found that the Guillemot Expedition (We nick-named Dad’s the Zipper, due to the large zipper he put on the deck using marquetry!) is a great boat both for camping, due to the great amount of space in it, and for day trips, since it handles like a smaller boat and tracks very nicely. 

All in all, we greatly enjoy our time on the water, and we enjoy building these kayaks as well. Let us know if you want us to build one for you, or simply want some tips on how to get started!