Castiac Wednesday

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by RedSledTeam

Beautiful boat, beautiful day, too bad no fish, but still way better than work! Thanks for sharing your experience. Tell us more about your yak. What is it?

It's essentially my design and I made it myself before I even started kayaking.


It's my first kayak and actually the first one that I ever climbed into. Still love fishing the thing espcially when it's rough or windy.

Technical wise.. It's built out of Loyd certified Mahogany, essentially stitch and glue (West epoxy) though I used more tape then wire to form it.



I based it loosely on a CLC design the Cape Charles 18


It's a one of a kind boat though, with unique hull, built form scratch, so it's not kit boat. Essentially I made it exactly to fit me, and the fishing I was doing at the time, with a nonstandard hull. I built it more like a combination of displacement sailboat, Dory, and kayak technology.



The idea is it has a very sharp entry and exit.....

......with a deeper mid section for stability and speed in rough water.


Technically it's a wave piercing hull that cuts through chop while staying level. Most kayaks like the Cape Charles above ride over waves, and therefore loose inertia to the up and down motion of their bow and stern. Lost inertia means you have to work harder to keep the yak going. With my design the kayak stays more level do to less displacement at each end and that combined with a lower center of gravity (like a sailboat) allows it to travel faster then chop then a normal kayak.

That was kind of the idea form the beginning since I built it to fish Santa Monica Bay in the winter in rougher conditions.
Of coarse that low displacement in the bow and stern that's great for paddling in rougher seas, makes it a bitch to surf launch and land.
Everything is a trade off. So I use the wood Kayak mainly out of harbors, or in lakes on days when the forecast predicts wind or seas, and fish my plastic yaks in the surf.

So there you have it. I love my wood Kayak.


Jim