Here is a picture of my D4

This is my second boat. After taking 9 months to finish a bateau.com easy canoe, I am more confident of my skills.  This one looks to be taking about a month to finish. 

I'm trying to build as many of the fittings as I can myself.  If I can muster up the patience, I'll build the blocks myself from the Duckworks article, though I may cheat and buy a few just to move launch day up.

Of course, all along the way, I keep thinking of ways I could have done some part or other better or quicker.  I guess that means I have to build another boat.  In fact, I already have the plans for John Welsford's Setnet and a promise from my nephew that he'll work on it with me.

Easy Canoe:

Here is a picture taken at the launch of my Six Hour Canoe.

This was built over the course of about 9 months.  For the whole course of the project, it seemed like any time I had a day off, it would threaten rain, and I was afraid to glue.  Since then, I've learned that my epoxy troubles were due to a bad batch of hardener, rather than excess humidity, so I'm braver now.

I tried duct taping the seams, but that didn't work out, and in the end I finally hit on the idea of wrapping it in surveyor's twine stapled to the sides.

The boat paddles easily, and tracks well if I put my weight just a little to the rear, so the tip of the stem comes out of the water a tiny bit. Unfortunately, it swallows waves whole, and once it is swamped, the voyage is over, there is no recovery.  Even the addition of about 200 lbs of bouyancy didn't help significantly.  It's a flat-water boat, and there just isn't very much flat water here in Hawaii.

I'm planning to convert it to an outrigger, and probably seal up the hull, to deal with that problem.

Jimmy Havok