Hello I am a newbie,
I do alot of shallow water guiding in a flats boat in south florida but am starting to get into kayak fishing for myself. I am thinking of purchasing the plans for the wadefisher 15-32 (I do have some knowledge in boat building and love building things) and was wondering if the outer wood skin could possibly be replaced with a sandwiched core such as devinicell or other type of composite. It is how my boat was built and is very strong and lite.
P.S. Please forgive me for thinking about replacing the wood for a sandwiched composite construction.
On bigger boats, sandwich core construction can be made very light over the same boat built with marine ply. The hull has the same strength. This can happen because a foam core is light and thick and the fiberglass skin is spaced wide apart. The fiberglass skin is made of multi layers of fiberglass and by the time you get enough fiberglass for the needed strength of a power boat, there's plenty of puncture resistance. The composite sandwich ends up being lighter than a hull with the same strength built with marine ply.
When you get into smaller hulls, the sandwich core advantage disappears over plywood. You could foam core the hull with fiberglass skins and it will be strong enough to match the strength of 4mm plywood. But the fiberglass skin won't be thick enough to offer the same puncture resistance. By the time you build up enough additional layers of glass to get that puncture resistance, it's heavier than marine ply.
Thanks for the fast reply. What makes this funny is after reading all the post one evening I found that the same question was asked before. Sorry for repeating. Also I was wondering if anybody thought of building retractable outriggers that retract into the body laterally instead of verticaly above the kayak. I have drawn a simple plan that uses light wight tubing and a couple of small pullys that make it easy to set. The kayak would however have to modified to fit the floats into the body, that would be the time consuming part. All things being theory it sounds like it shouldnt change the kayaks characteristics much when on the water.
