Building the Sea Kayak

We tried the recommended deck hatches, but their white plastic looked terrible against the naturally-finished deck. I ended up tracing trapezoidal hatches over the circular holes and cutting wooden hatches from leftover marine ply, slightly larger than the cutout. Since the forward hatch is slightly curved (the deck forms a slight vee at the back of the hatch), I laminated these hatches in place. I did one by stacking iron weights and sandbags on top of it and the other by using the vacuum pump to suck the hatch down onto the deck. This didn't work very well, probably because the cutout hole wasn't well sealed enough, so I ended up stacking weights on that one as well.

Vacuum bagging a hatch cover.

The finished hatch.

The only area where the Glen-L plans were lacking was in outfitting the kayak. Their hatch recommendation for the 8-inch or 10-inch round Beckson hatches isn't the most attractive and they don't mention anything about foot pegs, knee pads, hip braces, or a back rest. After our trial excursion with no outfitting except a Therm-a-rester seat, I realized how important this stuff is. I made foot pegs from douglas fir 1x2 strips, about 10 inches long, and a 1-inch dowel cut into 4-inch pieces. The dowel fits into holes in the strips and is adjustable all the way from Tanya's 5'5" to my 6'2" height, simply by pulling the dowel out of one hole and shoving it into the next. The strips are held in place with bolts and those little flat spiked nuts whose name I can't remember through holes in the hull. I would eventually like to cover them with a small glass patch and fair them into the hull because they're unsightly, even painted. They're also a small source of water ingress in waves, although not nearly as much as the water that will dump from your neoprene boots as soon as you get in, and a little silicone will solve that problem.

The mess of clamps on the left is the seat being clamped. On the right is the final result.