Bulkheads - 1 out of 2 aint bad

Ok, so having wired the boat together, the manual casually mentions to flip the boat over and support it in mid-air on poles attached to the gunwhale (the top edge of the hull).  This is a faff, especially if you want the boat to be vaguely level.  The important thing is you don't want the bottom of the boat touching anything otherwise it won't assume the right shape.  The hull stays in this state, hung in mid-air until its been epoxied permanently in shape, so spend some time on this.

Looks like a boat to me!

I thought the next bit was to get the fibreglass out, so I was all prepped and ready for that until I realised I needed to make the bulkheads.  For the landlubber: bulkheads are the cross-section shapes that you'll see in a boat - internal walls if you will.  In bigger boats, these might be watertight, they might have doors in them, etc.  In the Chesapeake 16, there are 2 bulkheads, and these are drawn full-size in the plans.

First you make the bulkheads in cardboard - the reason will become sadly clear shortly.  Take the plans, lay them over some cardboard.   Use a bradawl or pin to transfer the lines from the plans to the cardboard.  Finally have some dot-to-dot childhood throwback time to join them up.  Simples!

So this all works great if they fit.  I was lucky - one of mine did!  The other, not so good.  Bulkheads for the kayak should not distort the shape of the hull - they should just fit to it, possibly drawing the sides in a little if they're loosely wired.


Well, I quickly cut the bulkhead out that fits from the wood.  Be warned - they don't make this clear in the manual, but follow the wood layout guide.  The bulkhead is cut from the 6mm ply (all else thus far being 4mm).  The 6mm piece is 4ft x 4ft and is mainly used for the bits that make up the coaming.  One of the bulkheads comes out of the middle bit of the coaming, so bear that in mind or you'll not have enough space on the board to draw out the other bits.  Fortunately, I had spotted this one!

It doesn't look too bad here, but trust me - its not right

So why didn't the other one fit, you ask?  Hmm - well I'm pretty confident of my measuring (I checked, ohhh I checked!), but I think this is one of those flexible things about boat building - by the time you've wired your panels together, they can assume a number of shapes, esp if you, like me, bought your own wood with its own bending abilities.  Its not that anything is wrong - tho always check, just in case!  Its just that every boat assembles differently.

If you look here, you'll see how far out this is

My next job therefore is to work out the shape from scratch.  If yours is a close, but inaccurate fit, you can adjust it, but mine wasn't wide enough, deep enough, etc and its easier I think to start again.  I've taken a while thinking this one out, and I'll certainly take any suggestions as its an awkward shape!  My current approach is drawing a line around the shape (you can see it faintly in the photo above) and then marking lengths, etc.  I layed a bar across the top and measured the drops to different points.  However, this isn't quite working, so I'm going to have to revisit this.

Thats about where I'm up to, tho we're approaching Christmas now and so I don't think I'm going to have much more time until we're the other side of it.  Its cold in the garage at the moment, so thats not helping.  You know what they say, you can't have your kayak and heat it!  (Sorry, its the only kayak joke I know - you were going to get it at some point!)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to one and all!  Pete