After getting the shear strip set, I started planking the hull. My design called for the sides to be linear to the chine. Stop! What on earth is a chine? Well I’m glad you asked.
Warning: technical stuff! A chine is the where the side of the boat transitions to the bottom of the boat. Some kayaks, like my Night Heron for instance, have hard chines. It’s a clearly defined line. Other boats have a smoother transition, some no transition.
How the chine is designed defines the stability of the boat especially in rough water, turns, and the tippyness (yes tippy is a word used to describe kayak stability and feel, even though my spell checker disagrees).
In sharp contrast, the African Queen 18 (see The Two Kayaks Story) has almost no chine. It has one constant curve from the shear strip to the keel (absolute bottom of the boat). The AQ18 feels very, very tippy. However after much testing, it’s not all that easy to tip over. You eventually get used to the tippy feeling, your body starts adjusting for it.
The Great Auk’s chine is called “soft”, gently and gracefully flowing from the sides to the bottom. The Great Auk might get tossed around a little in the chop and may not turn as sharp on it’s edge but the soft chine provides stability and very little tippyness . I then set the planks along the shear strip, the length of the boat. This went pretty fast. It would have gone faster but I’m trying to avoid using staples for the construction (I’ll explain in a later blog).
