Pygmy Kayak Guru Lends Hand in Construction

             The Olympic Mountains, visible from the garage window, are veiled in humidity, but Port Townsend occupies a happy circle of sunlight. Admiralty Inlet calmly glows like a napping cat purring on a warm lap, beckoning to be pet. Fine white dust covers every eclectic item on the cluttered shelves. The workbench is scattered with bastard files, sandpaper, dirty tongue depressors, spent syringes, paper towels. John inspects the sheer seam, adding his own practiced touch to the rounded edge so that the glass will sit just right. I follow suit on the port sheer seam, pushing long strokes along the swirly grain.

Fiberglass cloth on inside of pre-saturated hull. 

            Today we’ll apply the last major piece of fiberglass to the Coho Hi. Freya’s dad, John, has been kind enough to lend us an experienced hand. The fiberglass on the hull, which Freya and I applied a few weeks ago, did not come out like we had hoped. There are obvious humps and valleys along the largest panel. Running my callused hand from bow to stern, I can feel the imperfect ridges beneath my fingers. It’s a problem that can be fixed with a palm sander and a dust mask, a monotonous project that must be completed—according to John—before we fiberglass the deck.

Removing excess fiberglass cloth.

Laying out cloth on stern half of hull. 

Wetting out fiberglass with epoxy. 

            After making sure I’m using the sander at the correct angle, John and Freya drive downtown to buy light bulbs and slices of pizza. It’s late afternoon and there’s no telling how long the sanding might take. Saturating and squeegeeing the fiberglass requires a certain amount of meticulousness. Having sufficient light to see our work is essential and, without daylight, the garage is like Plato’s cave: one bright bulb silhouettes reality into counterfeit forms. 

Finishing the bow and stern ends on the inside of the hull. 

Getting ready to sand and file after the deck has been glued in place. 

            I chain myself to the palm sander, wrap the dust mask over my face and dig in, grimacing. 120 grit sandpaper balances aggressiveness and delicacy. Variable speeds extract unwanted layers. Wrinkles disappear beneath the vibrating, spinning, churning machine. Now an authentic form is beginning to be revealed. This is what the word “kayak” truly means: immaculate lines, sexy curves, weightlessness.

John and I sanding the hull. 

Applying epoxy and squeegeeing bow end of deck. 

            “Wow! Looks great,” says John, handing me a slice of feta, green pepper, sundried tomato pizza.

            “Thanks,” I reply, swallowing an enormous bite.

            “If you do the same thing to the rest of the hull panels, you’ll really have a boat you can be proud of.” I will feel like a doting father watching his daughter perform miracles on the violin. That’s right people. She’s mine.

John wetting out the fiberglass. 

            I stand on a milk crate and screw in the new light bulb. What an incredible difference. The boat shines brilliantly, as if thankful for this overdue change.

John, Freya and I lay the white fiberglass cloth over the deck, smoothing it out with our gloved hands. Freya mixes a batch of epoxy and pours it into a paint tray. John explains and demonstrates exactly how he likes to load the foam roller with epoxy, and how to apply it to the fiberglass. He seems to be remembering his ideal technique as he distributes the first coat. Perhaps the physical movements are jogging his memory. Soon, he settles on a simple method, which is slightly different than what Freya and I did on the hull. He uses less epoxy to wet out the glass, utilizing the squeegee to press it lightly against the wood. John philosophizes briefly about small details in the process before handing me the squeegee and setting me to work.

Putting a fill coat on the finished deck. 

Gluing the cockpit coaming onto the deck. 

Cockpit coaming clamped in place. 

Night robs color from the sky while the clouds release the mountains. The cozy garage is a lighthouse amongst concrete and lawns. Shadows cannot survive in these conditions. There is only the shimmer of wetted out fiberglass, the faint smell of chemicals, the weary chuckles of three satisfied workers. The deck is perfect. Now that we know what looks right, Freya’s boat will be a cinch. I shake John’s hand and thank him for his enlightening help. We exit the cave together, leaving the boat to harden. A pure and fluid shape, it begs to get wet. 

Spring Brings Motivation on Pygmy Kayak Construction

            As far as I can tell, there are two ways to build a boat. One can either fully immerse themselves in the project, working on a daily basis to complete the task as efficiently as possible. Or he/she can build the boat in free moments when other, more pressing matters are not occupying the day. It could be a few hours after dinner and before sleep. Maybe a long lunch will provide enough time to add a coat of epoxy. The work must get done one way or another and either strategy will produce a wonderfully beautiful kayak, at least eventually.

John Lockwood and I looking at the wired hull.

With the incredible amounts of snowfall that have been salting our local mountains, Freya and I have favored the latter approach this winter. Essentially, we were working on the Coho between ski trips. While our gloves were drying and our legs were resting, we were sanding, filing, wiring, epoxying and fiberglassing. However slowly, the boat began to take shape. I was satisfied with our progress, but I was so preoccupied with slicing my track through heaps of powder that I failed to realize how much work we still had left.

Bow seam with tight wires.

A few weeks ago the Pacific Northwest received a day of warmth and sunshine that was highly anticipated and long overdue. The streets and parks came alive with young, vibrant, scantily dressed individuals who had been hiding in their shadowy abodes all winter. It was an incredible sight. Apparently there was some sort of chemical reaction occurring that made people appear out of thin air. Parking lots were overflowing with cars; shrimp shacks had lines out the door; country roads were clogged with photographers pointing bulky lenses at blooming flowers. Clearly, it was spring and although it was pouring rain a few days later, the verve and excitement would last for weeks.

John and I truing the stern seam. 

            I immediately realized that, unless we wanted to spend the entire summer cooped up in a dusty garage, we better start putting some real work into the boats. In a previous post, I wrote that building the kayaks in the calm moments between storms would force me to take my time; it would force me to be meticulous. That was true, but what I failed to realize was that it is possible to be meticulous without being anal-retentive. Following that rationale, I also realized that it is possible to be meticulous without being downright slow. Before, we were building the boat between storms. Now, we decided to build the boat by storm.

Tightening wires on stern seam.

            The process began with drilling and wiring together hull panels. We were soon forced to buy more wire because I had broken so much of it by twisting it too tight. Next, we inserted the temporary frames and wired them to the hull. Our hull now had its finished shape and, seeing it, I felt the strong desire to plop it in the sound and start paddling right away. Luckily, I was able to overcome that particular urge. Once we had filled all the hull seams with regular and then thickened epoxy, we allowed it to dry overnight. Much sanding and filing followed. Freya used the “I have to work on the website” excuse to explain her absence, but I was happy to grind away at the hardened epoxy while listening to the Mariners lose yet another game to the Texas Ranger. Freya decided to return and help with the fiberglass—thank God!—which we laid over the hull and smoothed with our hands before saturating with epoxy. After applying two fill-coats to the hull over the course of the next two days, we were ready to wire the deck together. Warm rays flooded into the garage windows as we twisted the seams tight and straightened them with a razor knife. Low blood sugar would occasionally necessitate a raid on my parent’s refrigerator and we were caught red handed more than once when Mom returned home to find that the shelves were empty of what she had been planning to eat for lunch. Amongst dust masks, disposable gloves, stir sticks, mixing cups, syringes and sandpaper, we performed our work, and visible changes were happening every single day.

Unthickened epoxy on seams. 

Thickened epoxy on seams with pin holding seam straight. 

            I had nightmares about honey-thick epoxy dripping down my hull, about enormous bubbles forming beneath the fiberglass. After breakfast, I would walk up to my parent’s house and discover, to my relief, that my visions were not prescient.

Applying epoxy that is the consistency of honey using dental syringe. 

Making sure I did it right.

            Another surprising thing happened. I found that the building process was rekindling some of the passion that I once had for carpentry. I organized a delivery of spruce car decking to my family’s cabin on the coast so that I could sheet the loft, a project that had been left unfinished for a year due to my procrastination. Freya and I spent five days on the coast, visiting with friends and putting some solid work into the Pentagon. Upon returning, I continued to make the kayak a daily priority.

Applying fillet to deck reinforcement plate. 

Working on the deck with hull stored beneath. 

            This afternoon, we will fiberglass the inside of the hull and after that we will be ready to sandwich the deck and hull together. There are only a few pages left in the instruction manual, but there are still many hours of work and we have another boat to build after we are done with this one. Still, the Mariners have won seven out of the last ten games; sunshine is gracing our shores more frequently; and the glassy water is beginning to look more and more inviting. Soon, I hope, my kayak’s hull will feel the buoyant clutch of the ocean. Until then, I better get back to work.