Committed, or need to be,,,

Thats one BIG hole in Lizzy-yak,,, who is now no longer Lizzy-yak: kinda sorta in limbo at this stage as she is not a viable kayak yet and will get a new name (thinking “Patches”, maybe,,,,  something else may come to me between now and then) (at this point, she is more related to Canoe, than Kayak,,,)

And I can now see a possible reason I have had one hell of a time getting to know this boat.   That deck is THICK with Resin and Glass,,, with a thick coating of Gelcoat on top of that.   The hull bottom is thinner by quite a bit and not glass but the Brit equivalent Kevlar, so its lighter, and no where near as much Gelcoat (and white gelcoat so even lighter)(yes, the colors have different densities.)

The Girl is TOP HEAVY. 

And the amount of Resin that was put around the coaming,,,  Shit was half inch thick in places,,,  Just the coaming wieghs around five pounds. 

There is a reason she scaled out at near 70#,,,,    I can imagine that there are a couple pounds of resin in each tip, bow and stern.  The place that is near impossible to ‘glue together’ when bonding deck to hull, so they do a pour of straight resin in those ends and let it cure (with the boat standing  on it head or tail as appropo)

Well, I have cut a lot of that away now, and what I am putting back in IS kevlar and I will be using a mold, one built in place so the only resin build up will be the “Lapped weld” where the old and new meet.    And I plan to use epoxy instead of polystyrene resins.  Lighter, easier to control cure with longer working times, and a whole lot less prone to moisture contamination.   A little pricier but I am not building the whole boat with it.  Just that cockpit coaming.  

As for the seat,,,   I could reuse the seat I just cut out,,, OR,,, Spend a wee bit and get one of those injection molded foam seats from Duckworks.  ( I used one in Serena and re-used it in Selkie.  They are quite comfortable and much easier to ‘fit’ in a boat than form-fitting one in place.

and nothing is happening fast at this point.   Epoxy ain’t gonna cure on that porch right now (it will, but the working time would be MONTH, not hours)   ‘Sides, I have a lot of prep work to do yet.    And I’m considering how to lighten that deck a bit,,, Its flippin’ heavy,,,,   Probably gonna have to live with it though.   Short of grinding off all that gelcoat and ‘painting’ a new layer, not as thick, I have no idea.   As a comparison, the new Nordkapps are 1-20# lighter with same materials.  Processes have evolved and they are no longer doing FULL hand layups, but vacuum bagging the hulls and decks.  TONS less resin wasted, which only adds weight, not strength.   (thick resin is actually more prone to crackiing as it has less ‘give’. Same with thick Gelcoat.)

Yeah,   Thinking a New white jacket with matching room with really soft walls may be in my future,,,, (good thing the Demoncraps put all those to the curb back in the nineties, eh?  )