After seven months, it’s complete. I think it turned out OK. Sure the design was ambitious and if you get too close you can see little mistakes. But overall it was a success.
The boat is not tippy, very stable and slides into turns much easier than the Pungo poly boat. It is much narrower (6″), therefore it’s easier to paddle under “duress”–my term for hard, fast more vertical paddling. And we know it weighs 20 lbs less. All in all a well designed boat.
We will not however, use the kayak launch(the white thing in the video) again. I know scratches will happen but I’d rather have better stories about the damage. Gouges from Class 3 rapids. A shortcut through the shallow riffles during a contested race. Or even dings from Asian carp banging against the hull. But alas, the launch plastic was much harder than the epoxy and varnish and left a whole bunch of scratches on the hull.
We’ll try to create some better stories from here on.