The Evolution of the Short, Fat Kayak

June-July 1998

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

by Barry Jensen

"WHAT is THAT?"

I was not used to such unflattering reactions to my little boat, and was quite taken aback as this insensitive clod began to describe it as looking like a pregnant cigar. On reflection, at nine feet long, twenty-nine inches wide in the middle and pointy at the ends, he wasn't far wrong. Especially since it is built out of cedar strip and finished naturally with clear fiberglass and epoxy resins: it has that light brown color reminiscent of fine cubans.

Beauty, as they say, is in the eyes of the beholder. I was more used to the accolades of appreciation it attracted whenever I take it out for a spin. In fact, it got me a free smoked salmon dinner once, as I was paddling around the anchorage. (I use it in lieu of a dinghy on my twenty-five foot sailboat.) After calling me over to discuss its construction for about twenty minutes, a yachtsman handed me a bag of smoked salmon, for my "trouble", as he said.

Discussing boats and boatbuilding is, in fact, no trouble. Building kayaks is almost as much fun as paddling them. This little boat I am discussing now is a take-off from a Rushton designed "double-paddle canoe" from the previous century. In his book, Rushton and His Times in American Canoeing, (New York: The Adirondack Museum/Syracuse University Press, 1968) Atwood Manley discusses the development of canoes and canoe building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and gives line drawings and offsets for many models.

According to Manley, it was Rushton's response to the Scotsman, "Rob Roy" MacGregor's rather heavy (seventy pounds), fourteen foot decked canoe, modeled after the Eskimo kayaks he had seen in his travels, that started it all. You see, MacGregor, who was "an odd mixture of religious zealot, intellectual, and sportsman", had designed his Rob Roy canoe to be sailed or paddled with a double-bladed paddle so that he could "see Europe at a leisurely pace, rub shoulders with the common people, and at the same time do a little missionary work". The trip was published in his account, A Thousand miles in the Rob Roy canoe on twenty rivers and lakes of Europe. The profits from his writing and speaking engagements went to institutions for helping "vagabond and needy boys"; it is interesting to note that MacGregor was a friend of Warington Baden-Powell, elder brother of Robert Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement.

"The canoe is not only a vehicle, but furnishes a dry and secure bed for sleeping at night, and, with its rubber apron, is a refuge from rain and storm."

According to Manley, "Rushton made his first boat for himself, another man insisted on having it; so he made more boats. First the local people, then the world made a beaten path to the door of his boatshop in the village of Canton", New York (Manley, p.1). Made out of cedar planks of one-quarter to three-eighths inches thick, in lapstrake (aka clinker) fashion over oak ribs, Rushton's boat weighed in at under thirty pounds. These early boats were meant to be rowed, but evolved into the American Traveling Canoe model used by three friends who embarked on a journey to the headwaters of the Mississippi. Described by one of the friends, "these boats were fourteen feet long, ten and a half inches deep, twenty-seven inches wide; decked over except a man-hole sixteen by about thirty-six inches, and weighing, with the mast and lug-sail, from fifty to fifty-six pounds. The paddle is eight feet long, bladed at each end, grasped in the middle, and drives the canoe by strokes alternating on each side. The traveler sits flat upon the boat's floor, facing the bow. The canoe is not only a vehicle, but furnishes a dry and secure bed for sleeping at night, and, with its rubber apron, is a refuge from rain and storm". They slept in these things!

This type of account spread Rushton's fame, and in the 1880's, he formed an association with one George Washington Sears, who wrote in the magazine, Forest and Stream, of his travels in Rushton canoes in New York's Adirondack region, under the pen-name "Nessmuk". Nessmuk was a small man, who asked Rushton to build him a small canoe of less than twenty-nine pounds. Rushton produced a boat of three-sixteenths of an inch cedar lapstrake planks, ten feet long by twenty-six inches beam, eight inches deep in the centre, "propelled by a light double paddle, with a one-fool power in the middle, (that) gets over the water like a scared loon". These boats proved very popular, and led to the design and construction of his smallest and lightest boat, the "Sairy Gamp" (named after "Sairey", the nickname for Sarah Gamp in Charles Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit).

The little craft became legendary through Nessmuk's writing in Forest and Stream. Once, he reported on his trip up the Hudson River and into Central Park, where he found a nice place to camp. Unfortunately, camping was not allowed even back then, and just as he was cooking his supper, a policeman came along; Nessmuk spent the night in jail.

In any event, Rushton became known as the "champion builder of the go-light brotherhood. He helped to democratize the sport by supplying inexpensive canoes so light that the traveler could handle them easily on the carries without the services of a guide." His Sairy Gamp had evolved into an eight and a half foot decked canoe with a twenty-three inch beam, at nine pounds, fifteen ounces. (ibid., p. 55). Eventually, the depression of the 1890s, the popularity of bicycling, and a scarce supply of good lumber turned his business into a less successful one. As the demand for even cheaper, mass-produced articles took place, cedar and canvas, then aluminum, and now fiberglass canoes became the norm, and Rushton's little cedar boats became all but forgotten.

Recently, though, with Thomas J. Hill's Ultralight Boatbuilding, for example (and his eleven and a half foot lapstrake plywood planked Charlotte double-paddle canoe), and the development of epoxies and cedar strip, a renewed interest in canoe and kayak building has evolved. It was these designers and writers who inspired me to design my own wee craft to use to paddle around the anchorages. I wanted a boat that fit comfortably on the deck of my small (twenty-five foot) sailboat, that could carry two people, yet be light enough to swing up and down to and from the water without straining.

At nine feet overall by twenty-nine inches wide, it is built out of cedar strips and covered in epoxy resin and fiberglass cloth. It is based somewhat loosely on Rushton's Sairy Gamp, although the lines were drawn by me. It has a small deck at each end, with a long cockpit (and no spray cover), as it often has to ferry two people between sailboat and shore. I estimated its overall maximum displacement with crew, passenger and cushions aboard about three hundred pounds maximum. The boat itself, however, weighs in at about twenty pounds.

Since the cedar strips I used were left over from a previous project (my sixteen foot kayak), the cost of the boat was minimal. Cost of the epoxy resin and six-ounce fiberglass cloth was about one hundred dollars. Depending on your source of cedar, add another hundred bucks or less for the planking. I scrounge my plywood forms from construction sites (always ask first - I've rarely been refused), so the cost was a buck or two in gas. Not counting reading, designing, and trips to the suppliers (I usually buy at Pelagic in Victoria due to their reasonable prices and expert and helpful staff), the boat took about one hundred and fifty hours to build.

I wanted a boat that fit comfortably on the deck of my small sailboat, that could carry two people, yet be light enough to swing up and down to and from the water without straining.

To familiarize oneself with the cedar strip method of building, I highly recommend Canoecraft, by Ted Moores and Marilyn Mohr, published in 1983 by Camden House. Some authors and builders recommend ordinary fiberglass resins to cover wood boats at about a quarter of the price of epoxy. Unfortunately, ordinary fiberglass resin is not a glue, and once the surface has been breached will let water in to spread between the wood and fiberglass coating. Once this happens, your carefully constructed objet d'art will turn to mush as the rot takes hold and the covering peels off.

The method, for those who are unfamiliar with cedar strip building, is as follows: a form of plywood cross-sections is erected over a strongback of two-by-fours or -sixes; cedar strips of about one-quarter by three-quarter inches are bent over the strongback. Each piece is edge-planed to the correct angle (some builders use a cove and bead shaper or router on the edges to save planing, but I find this too finicky, and the bits too expensive), then glued to the piece next to it, and stapled in place. Strip by strip, the hull is completed, the staples removed, the hull sanded and faired, and covered in plastic, inside and out.

The result is a very strong, watertight hull. The boat can be built lighter, and still be relatively stiff. In fact, the next time, I would like to try three-sixteenths or even one-eighth inch thick strips. Usually, epoxying takes a little getting used to, and the key is to spread the resin over the boat as quickly as possible, then go back over it to fair the hull. The outer skin of six ounce fiberglass cloth is usually covered with two coats of epoxy; the inner skin with only one. This leaves the inner skin with an "orange-peel" finish that is non-skid. After a little sanding and trimming, the whole enchilada is covered with a UV-inhibiting coating, such as spar varnish, as epoxy's chief weakness is that it is broken down by ultraviolet rays in sunlight.

These little boats, although they are called canoes, resemble kayaks in that they are paddled with a "double paddle", with the paddler sitting low in the boat. They are great for poking about the shore or small bays. You can buy a roto-moulded plastic kayak for seven or eight hundred bucks, but they are usually quite a bit heavier (one popular model is forty pounds). As a member of the 'go-light brotherhood', I like to take my little canoe-yak along with me by sailboat or by car, for a leisurely paddle wherever I am.

Bary Jensen is a librarian in Victoria, and was the on-site coordinator for the 1997 Ocean Kayak Festival.