WindyBeard

Hey Don, Yes, a notch like Steve or Amos or others have and a recessed deck was what I had in mind. Since I won’t buy a motor until I’m well into the build I figure I can plan the notch accordingly but I’ll gladly take any advice. Your mount seems to put the motor pretty far back… does that weight hanging out there cause any issues? Thanks, Derek

I think for my mark 3 I’ll be doing option 1 but with long shaft. But this is based on reading what everyone else has done, not on any experience of my own. I’ll be closely watching what you do; you’ll likely be slightly to moderately to majorly ahead of me the whole way…

Thanks guys!

My name is Derek. We live in Orlando Florida, and have 6 kids (two grown and married, two in college, two in high school) and two grandkids. That’s the important stuff. I’m an electrical engineer and I work on graphics and AI chips for a big computer chip company. Always wanted to build a sailboat; but we lived in Colorado for 15 years and parenting took priority.

Just placed a kit order. A little late to the party but looking forward to building! Alan answered all my questions patiently and we’re tentatively planning to come to the messabout to pick it up. I have thoroughly enjoyed looking through everyone else’s logs here and appreciate all the accumulated knowledge! Thank you all in advance for advice and know-how!

I was mainly reacting to the “don’t even have acetone in your factory” statement and thinking about the cleanup of brushes with the “3 acetone jar” method I’ve seen from a few videos. I think I’ll stick to disposable brushes as suggested.

Having built a cedar strip kayak previously and having watched all the videos I can, I feel ready to start a build soon. I was planning to use acetone as in Alan and Taylor’s build videos, and then I ran across this website: https://resinresearch.net/acetone-and-epoxy/ Have any of you heard this previously, and what are your thoughts? On my kayak, I mostly used squeegies and my brushes were disposable. But a cs20.3 will take a lot of brushes…

Makes sense, ok. My experience is coming from my cedar strip kayak (my last build and only design) where no strength or stiffness came from the core material, really.

I would think plywood with even a light cloth on both sides would be a lot stiffer and stronger than plywood with only epoxy. Would this let one go to a thinner plywood and save overall weight?

Well I had two ideas. One was to put an angle right in front of where the sides enter the transom, make the parts inside the hull run parallel. But I feel like that would compromise strength. The other would to make it so the small crosspiece is removable, such that it’s two sides but each could be removed. But that might get in the way of the mizzen tackle. Thoughts? By the way those smooth wide radius edges on yours look sweet!

Planning to order a kit and start a build soon, and very excited. I'd like it to be a 20, but may have to sit diagonally in the garage due to space constraints. Looking for ideas and information about removable boomkins; I saw in another thread somewhere that someone was thinking about this and referenced Oughtred designs that have them, but that looks like a singe arm boomkin, similar to the removable bowsprit. Wondering if anyone has tried to make the current design removable by some method. Major bonus points if it can look pretty like Alan's recent photos of his! Thanks and regards, Derek