coucal

Love the taper at the end of the side strips - and those seats look great too. Nice work all round.

Looks fantastic, nice work on both.

I used a Yakima foam block & strap arrangement for my car for a while. Even with tie-downs to front and rear I had a couple of scary moments on the freeway, and have upgraded to proper racks. I've also just installed straps to the bolt inside the engine bay for my car as per Andy's photo above, and the improvement over my previous makeshift fixing to bumpers & grille is unbelievable. 100% recommend.

Hi all, My Ravenswood was nominated for the Wooden Boat Association of Victoria (Australia) 2019 Alann Chinn amateur boat builder award. I didn't win (the deserving winner was Russell Hurren for his restoration of a 24' carvel motor cruiser) but I got a nice write-up and some pics on the association website: https://woodenboat.asn.au/members-stories/428-jack-ellis-s-skin-on-frame-kayak-jack-s-story.html There's some interest in SOF construction in the Association, and I hope it leads to more Kudzu boats being built in Victoria. Cheers, Jack.

Hi Tony, Sorry I didn't get back to you about the skin, but if that's your Stonefly on the Yarra in the launching pages it looks like everything worked out perfectly - it looks great. For the record, I potentially could have saved some money buying local (as ever in Australia, postage is a killer) but given my experiments trying to buy local sinew (I had to try three times from three different suppliers to find sinew that looked good and didn't snap) I was worried that I'd waste time and money buying something, finding it wasn't quite right, then buying a replacement. I bought the Aquacote finish online from Boatcraft Pacific in Sydney. What did you use? Cheers, Jack

First trials in the Yarra. Very fast and comfortable - actually, the rate at which the boat accelerated from the first stroke of the paddle was a bit of a shock.

Ravenswood, frames and coaming in hoop pine ply, stringers in WRC, polyester skin bought from the Kudzu store finished with clear Aquacote 2-part polyurethane. Mr Horton's book is right - I was so desperate to get the boat in the water during the last bit of fitout it almost sent me crazy. Then it was suddenly finished, and I just stood around looking at it, putting off and putting off the 'flotation trials'... Boat on the car. I really wanted that translucent finish.