Deck the Hull... Fa-la-la-la-laa

Here in no particular order are some signs of progress...

I have admitted previously to having second thoughts on my deck design on account of its myriad of unanticipated challenges.

...of course, the unanticipated nature was simply a matter of my inexperience and foolish notion of having to make something special. Even some rather "ordinary" design would, in fact, have looked quite splendid on this fabulous kayak.

For better or for worse, I will complete what I started and will chalk the outcome up to gaining a boat-load of experience working with cedar strips. Whatever it's eventual appearance, it will paddle like a Night Heron and that's job one.

Anyway, in the process I have gotten reasonably good at getting a tight fit on the easy pieces which do not require extraordinary clamping maneuvers or major bending and twisting.

With a simpler design I would have had finished the deck a long time ago.

But here I am, still plowing away - decking the hull - as it were.

Okay then, I am trying to take a quasi Zen approach - "being in the moment" and "enjoying the journey" - with splinters, dust and sticky fingers - it seems to be the fa-la-la way.

A building meditation in cedar!

In fact, during moments of pause I have given some thought to what I might build after the Night Heron has been completed.

In case it has not yet become totally self-evident: a nascent shipwright I be!

I should pick a fully strip-planked boat, for example the microbootlegger which is another one of Nick Schade's designs.

There are many other tempting sleek sea-kayaks such as the Petrel - 100% strip planked. But I'd rather build something in which my wife would feel comfortable. This last season we had some promising outings on rented kayaks.

If I select a straight-forward design, the lines of the boat itself will be high-lighted. On the microbootlegger this would work very well. 

In the course of my deck building efforts so far, I have arrived at one definitive conclusion: the ideal builder of boats would either be an Octopus or else one of those Hindi Deities with a myriad of arms encircling the gilded torso.

Alas, (happily) I am neither!