Kindly Old Dr. K’s Hydrosphere

If you’re building a stock boat, the mold usually comes with a mold for an integral seat and cockpit.  For this modern update of the Augsburg, I decided to modify the cockpit to a larger cockpit and make a custom seat.  While I’m sure this will be worthwhile it adds a fair amount of work to the project.

One of the old methods for making a cockpit rim without a mold is to just contact cement a length of 3/4″ plastic hose around the hole in the deck and lay glass over it to make a cockpit rim.  I tried a couple trial versions of this and I wasn’t happy with the way I envisioned it turning out.  I decided to make the cockpit rim similar to my modern playboat/river runer.  I know this cockpit shape fits me well and if I get it close enough to the playboat shape and size I can use my existing skirts with the new boat.  I decided to make a cockpit rim mold off my modern boat and modify it to fit the Augsburg.

Here are some pictures of the process so far.

This is the seat/cockpit mold that came with the mold.  The rim is too small for the modified Augsburg and the factory original seats were always too small for me anyway.

The popular modern river/play boat cockpit is prepped to serve as a plug for the new cockpit rim mold.  The white stuff is clay used to fill niches in the cockpit rim.  Epoxy doesn’t bond to polyethylene, so you don’t even have to wax and mold release it.

You can’t see them, but the wax paper is covered with cut strips of fiberglass impregnated with resin.  We’ll lay layer after layer of these on the plug to create the mold.

Building up the layers of glass strips on the plug.  The tape and kraft paper protect the plug boat from drips.

The cockpit mold is cured and popped off the plug boat.  I made this mold fairly light, as I will need to bend it a little to make the final cockpit rim conform to the shape of the Augsburg deck.

Getting the cockpit mold ready involves sanding and cutting fiberglass.  The dust is nasty stuff, so it’s time to suit up.

Next step:  Laying up the cockpit rim.

The deckis out of the mold and it turned out well.  Here are a few pix of the new deck.

The deck fresh out of the mold.  The paper cockpit template is still stuck to the part.

The bow portion of the deck.  I’ve always loved the lines of this boat.  There don’t seem to be any major flaws.  Cool.

The  new deck laid on top of the new hull, starting to look like a boat.  Tradition dictates that you stand there and make whoosing, splashing noises at this point.

I peeled back a bit of the mold release film to get a look at the real surface of the deck.  It doesn’t show up that well in the photo, but it’s a beautiful deep purple with lots of metalflake sparklies.

Next step:  fabricating a custom cockpit rim.

The deck is laid up in much the same way as the hull.  The deck is somewhat lighter than the hull.  For this boat I’m using two layers of glass and one of kevlar, with a large amount of reinforcement at various places.  There are two additional layers of kevlar at the bow and stern and several layers around the areas at the bow and sterm where the grab loops will be attached.  There are also kevlar ribs in the large flattish areas of the bow and stern deck.  The cockpit area is heavily reinforced to make this region very rigid.  This is because the cockpit area takes the stress of getting into and out of the boat and is also a safety feature in a pin situation. In this boat there are a total of 9 layers of glass and kevlar around the cockpit.

The only innovation I’m bringing to this project is the cockpit.  Old boats like this one had cockpits that were very small by modern standards.  They worked fine, but large cockpits are one of the most intuitively obvious safety improvements of recent years.  So, I made a paper template of the cockpit on my Super Fun and set this template on the deck mold.  This template allows me to lay up the deck up to the limit of my new cockpit, without making a bunch of deck that would only be cut out later.

Here are some pictures of the deck layup process.

The mold was labeled by Ted when he made it decades ago.  Carter Hearn says he think it’s been at least 15 years since anyone used this mold

The deck mold is cleaned and waxed.  The cockpit hole is sealed with a wooden plate for use in vacuum bagging.

The mold has been coated with mold release, polyvinyl dissolved in alcohol.  It forms a plastic film when dry and it sticks to neither the mold nor the epoxy part.  It happens to be purple in this case, just like the pigment I’m using in the boat.

The gelcoat has been applied.  In whitewater boats we don’t use a true gelcoat, which is a different kind of resin specifically designed for cosmetic appearance.  It adds weight without strength, so we just pour a thin layer of the structural resin into the mold so that the finished part does not have exposed glass at the surface. The kraft paper template shows where the new enlarged cockpit will be.

The deck is laid up and ready to cure.  It will be hard to the touch in a couple of hours and ready to pop out in a day or so.

The cockpit has several extra layers of glass and kevlar for rigidity.

I should have waited another day or so, but I couldn’t stand the suspense.  Popping a part out of the mold poses two big questions:

1)  Did the mold release work?  (Did I avoid total disaster?)

2) How does the part look?

As it turns out both answers are good.  The hull had been curing for about 24 hours and was hard to the touch, although it still needs more curing.  It was very gratifying to get the part to slide out of an ancient, long-dormant mold with only a minor struggle.

For us old school builders the term “gel-coat” is kind of a bad word.  We just paint a layer on the mold with the same resin we’re using for construction.  I didn’t do a clear layer as I’ve seen in the past that un-pigmented structural resin turns brown after a while exposed to the elements.  So, I took a chance and sprinkled metalflake in the purple outer resin coat.  I wasn’t sure it would work, but I just popped the hull out of the mold and it worked great.  I’ve got an opaque outer resin layer and the metalflakes shine through.

The deck is going to be tricker.  We’ll see.

Here are a couple of pics of the brand new hull.

Tyler Kirby inspects the new hull.  The blems you see in the surface are actually in the plastic mold release, still stuck to the hull.  The mold release washes off with water.

The bow area.  It’s difficult to see in the photo, but the silver metalflake is shining through nicely.

The hull is the biggest single piece of the project, and arguably the most important part of the boat.  For this project I’m using a four-layer hull: 2 layers of 6-oz. s-glass on the outside and 2 layers of 5-oz. kevlar on the inside.  In addition, there are multiple layers of extra kevlar in the bow and stern and under the seat, as well as strips of additional kevlar to serve as longitudinal ribs for extra stiffness.  Finally, in the foot area there is an additional pad of diolen to protect the kevlar from abrasion from the paddlers shoes.

Kayak in a Can.  It may not look like it, but there’s a whitewater boat hidden in these cans, waiting to be released.

The boat-building process is 90% preparation.  Epoxy is a very good glue, so the first responsibility of the boat-builder is to make sure that, when the layup is complete, the hardened boat part and the mold separate cleanly.  So, after the cleaning the mold the next crucial step is waxing.  Five coats of hand -rubbed carnauba wax seals pinholes and rough areas in the mold and forms the foundation for the mold release, a liquid plastic film that is painted onto the mold after the waxing is finished.  It may seem like over-kill at times, but this is a critical steps, as a stuck part means both the part and the mold are trashed, and thousands of dollars are down the drain.

Cutting the cloth.  The layers that go in to the boat must be carefully planned, with an eye toward constructability, strength, weight, and cost.  Each layer is cut to fit the mold before any resin is mixed.  Kevlar is fun to work with, as it’s soft, pliant, and one of the few ingredients of the entire boat-building process that isn’t toxic, carcinogenic, allergenic, or something.

The first layers are laid up.  For this boat I’m using a purple pigment with silver metal flake accents.  The purple contrasts strongly with the yellow kevlar.  Note that the layers are carefully trimmed along the edge as they are laid up.  This saves a dreadful chore of trying to trim a fully cured kevlar and glass part.  This stuff is tough, and will ruin saws and knives quickly.

The hull is finished.  The stern rib reinforcements are seen in the foreground, the seat reinforcement in the middle and the diolen foot pad in the distance.  The white fabric along the edges is peel-ply, a material that can be peeled off the part after the resin has hardened, leaving a surface ready for application of the inside seam without the extensive sanding that is usually required.

It doesn’t look glamorous from this angle, but the exterior will be beautiful when we pop it out of the mold in a couple of days.  I hope.

The last couple years I’ve been learning how to playboat and how to handle modern short boats in general.  It’s been a tremendous learning experience and loads of fun.  For all the advances in modern boats, though, there’s one thing they just don’t have, and can’t have, based on simple physics: SPEED.  A fast boat means a long boat, and a long plastic boat means a heavy boat, which defeats the whole purpose of having a long boat in the first place. Fast, light boats are simply not available in the marketplace except for highly specialized craft like squirt boats or slalom boats.  Great at what they do, but they come with heavy trade-offs in terms of comfort, safety, and cost.

When I started paddling in the early 70s almost everyone built their own boats for the simple reason that good whitewater boats were unavailable any other way.  The few commercially made boats were so inferior that they couldn’t be expected to last more than a few river trips without major repairs.  The modern paddler who wants a high performance river boat is presented, ironically, with the identical dilemma, i.e. the boat he or she wants isn’t made or sold anywhere.

Luckily, the old boat-building culture hasn’t disappeared completely.  Stashed in workshops and under decks across the country are untold numbers of boat molds awaiting the attention of the discriminating paddler.  My favorite long boat of all time was the Prijon Olympia 400, aka Augsburg, designed by Toni Prijon for the 1972 Olympics in Germany.  This boat is a contemporary of the Hahn C-1 that is still popular with C boaters in some areas of the country.  I’ve always felt the handling characteristics and aesthetics of the Prijon were superb and I still have the old one I built ca. 1973, although UV degradation has made it unpaddleable.

I casually inquired around the DC area for quite a while before I discovered that Carter Hearn (father of paddling legends David and Cathy Hearn) still had an original Augsburg mold.  This mold was made by Ted Waddell, one of the best local custom builders throughout the 70s.  Carter agreed to let me use the mold.  Carter’s son Davey and his wife Jennifer operate Sweet Composites, a complete source for all boat-building materials and equipment.  After quite a bit of dithering, I finally committed to the project, bought the materials and picked up the mold from Carter.  So, for the first time in at least 20 years I’m building a boat.  Here’s how it starts.

Carter helped me load the 80+ lb mold onto my car.

It may have been decades since this mold was opened.  It was amazingly clean and ready to go.  Ted Waddell built outstanding molds and boats.

This is the deck portion of the mold.  A little cleaning with water, get the cobwebs off and it’s about ready to go.  Note that the cockpit hole has been covered up; this indicates this mold was intended for vacuum bagging.  I’m sticking to old fashioned hand layup for this project, keeping it simple after a long layoff from the trade.

Here the mold halves are hanging in the shop, the hull below to be worked on first, the deck hanging above out of the way.  They will take some more cleaning, waxing, and covering with mold release before we’re ready to start laying glass.

More to come as the project develops.

Here are a few photos from the 2008 National Slalom Championships yesterday at ASCI.  There was a pretty good crowd there; I’d guess at least a couple of thousand.  There were also a good number of racers, about 70  on the start list, including six C1Ws (women C-1 paddlers.)  A lot of people are commenting that slalom is enjoying a resurgence and the scene at ASCI yesterday encourages that view.

The Saturday get-together at Anglers Inn near the Potomac.  Vendors, gear-swap, awards, games, it was all a blast. 

Check it out on YouTube

On Sunday July 13 we ran the two events I help organize: the Attainment Race and the Wave Surfing competition.  We had good water conditions for both events this year.

The Attainment Race was held at Difficult Run rapids, in a figure 8 loop as shown in the earlier post.  The average time for all racers was nearly 19 minutes, so there was plenty of lactic acid to go around.  Attaining has been a tradition on the Potomac for over 100  years and it’s as alive as ever.

The Wave Surfing event was held at Wet Bottom Chute, in the heart of the Mather Gorge.  Despite some early skepticism, this turned out to be the perfect venue for an old school hot dogging contest.  The wave was smooth and steady, allowing the full panoply of paddle spinning, paddle tossing, and air banjo tricks.  Ryan Bahn wowed everyone in his C-1, showing all that the entry on the official scoring sheet for standing up in the boat and surfing the wave was NOT a joke.  He opened the door and almost every contestant tried it thereafter.  I don’t have a picture of Ryan, but Jim Hubshman sat Potomac Paddlers says he got some great ones. 

Thanks to Adam Van Grack for convincing me to hold the event at Wet Bottom.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of whitewater paddlers having more fun than I did during and after the Wave Surfing event. 

Go to http://www.potomacfest.com/ for more pictures and results.

Attainment racers head upstream for Center Chute and glory.

Wind surfing wasn’t part of the contest, but loads of fun anyway.

Wave Surfers gather for the main event

A glassy wave on a sunny day.

Danny Stock and James Sneeringer

I’m not confident we will get the water levels needed for the Carderock course shown previously, so we’re going to move the race upriver a bit.  We will meet at Anglers Inn lower lot at 0800 for the competitors meeting and the race will start at approximately 0830.

The race will be a Figure 8 course.  We will start at the beach at Anglers put-in and race upstream to Center Chute of Difficult Run Rapids.  Attain Center Chute, then descend through Maryland Chute.  Cross back over to Center Chute and attain Center Chute again.  Descend through VA Chute and return to Anglers and finish by touching the beach at Anglers put-in. 

The course is about 1.5 miles long.  See the map below. 

The Attainment Race will be something different this year, if water levels cooperate.  If the gage stays around its current level we will race from Carderock Picnic Area to Anglers Inn.  This is two miles of intricate, knuckle-bustin’, route-finding hell.  All flatwater you say?  Try it going upstream and I think your perception will change.  See the map below.

If the water level drops too low we will probably head upstream and race from Sandy Landing (the road access on the VA side below Wet Bottom) to S-turn. 

Go to http://www.potomacfest.com/ for the latest information, to register and to volunteer.  If you’re a Potomac Paddler, the Attainment Race is your heritage.  This is the Potomac.  On the Potomac we attain.  ‘Nuff said.

It is …interesting.

I was walking to the put-in at Anglers on the Potomac when I saw Mike Mathwin and friends at the Potomac Paddlesports demo event. Lying there on the ground was the notorious Green boat. Mike suggested I take it for a spin and I was happy to oblige. Here are my impressions.

The idea of a new-school fast boat is very encouraging, as I think this is an area of boat design that’s been neglected for many years. The Green boat looks radically long by today’s standards, but it’s actually only 11 ft. 9 in, so it’s not really that big. The outfitting is very comfortable and nicely done, although I’d have to ditch the thigh braces and make something custom to fit my thunder thighs, as is true of every modern boat I’ve tried except the Jacksons.  It rolls super easy, as do most long boats. The Green is a heavy beast, massing every bit of the advertised 48 plus pounds and maybe a bit more. Not surprising for a long boat designed specifically for extreme racing, there’s a lot of plastic in there.

Coming from paddling short boats most of the time in recent years, paddling the Green is a story of acclimation. For starters it’s relatively tippy, at 24 inches wide. For slalom boaters and old school long boat paddlers this is a familiar feeling, and even long boat newbies will forget about this after a few minutes of paddling. More significant for me was the degree to which the boat is optimized for speed. I was expecting something akin to old school high volume slalom boat performance, but that’s not the Green boat. It’s surprisingly reluctant to turn for a medium length boat and requires a very determined effort to turn. I think the maneuverability on the Green owes more to wildwater boat principles than to slalom boats. Although it has a lot of rocker in the bow, the bow is v-shaped. What this means is that turning the boat requires you to lean hard to the outside of the turn to get the bow tip out of the water and then SWEEP hard to push it around.

Ferries and peel-outs require extra care for the same reason. Ferrying requires a very shallow initial angle and aggressive paddling to stay on line. If you do get off line, however, the raw speed allows you to make up for many mistakes.  The boat sna ps into eddies very nicely, with that old school crispness and dynamic feel missing from so many new boats.

It’s hard to say just how fast the boat is without a direct comparison. I’d say it’s slower than my old 4-meter glass boats like the Lettmann Mark IV, but faster than my T-Slalom. In general the handling characteristics reminded me most of some of the old touring boats like the Franconia or the Phoenix Isere. The Green is slower than these boats but has much better characteristics for steep whitewater, with the upturned bow presumably designed to allow faster resurfacing and such. Creeking and creek racing are not my bag so I wasn’t able to give the boat a fair test of its true purpose. I paddled it hard downriver from the Center Chute and it was a good ride, slicing through the waves nicely and gliding over the swirlies at the rock wall like they weren’t there.  After I gave back the Green boat I hopped in my Super Star and felt like I had taken off ankle weights.

That was my half-hour in the Green boat. You should definitely try it out if you get a chance, and it might be just what you’re looking for. I only wish they made it in a glass 25-lb version.

The Outdoor Industries Association occasionally publishes real numbers on participation and economics of various outdoor sports, including whitewater boating.  I took their numbers on participation in whitewater kayaking state-by-state and reorganized them into something like reasonable whitewater community regions.  I also divided the number of paddlers by the area of the state to get a boater density figure, i.e. how many paddlers per square mile for each state, just for fun.

There are a few surprises in here.  The region with the highest relative participation is New England, with a full 10% of Vermonters being paddlers.  Rhode Island has the highest boater density, with 20 paddlers per square mile!  What’s up with Indiana, with more whitewater boaters than Colorado or Georgia?  California by itself is as big as most other regions of the country.  New York City and its environs also constitute an entire region. 

Some cautions about these numbers:  first, they are old.  These figures are from 2001, and the sport has changed considerably since then.  Other OIA studies indicate that the number of people in the sport has fallen by as much as 80% since that time. 

Not every state was included: the states that don’t appear had numbers of paddlers too small to count reliably.  Also, the OIA based these figures on a metric they call”participants” which they define as a person who has been in a whitewater kayak at least once in the past year.  They also sometimes measure a category called “enthusiasts”, who have been in a kayak at least three times in the past year.  Participants outnumber enthusiasts about ten to one, so if you are using these numbers to describe what we might call “real” whitewater paddlers, i.e. people who own their own gear and go out regularly, you should mentally divide everything by ten.  AW says in their latest promotional video that there are about 100,000 whitewater boaters in the US, and that sounds about right.

So check these out.  How does your state and region rate?

I recently helped out some colleagues doing inspections of some dam structures.  My young engineers didn’t have a boat to get out to the riser, so they came to Kindly Old Dr. K for some help.  The Superstar may not be known as a workboat, but that’s what I had on my car, so it was pressed into service.  It turns out that playboats make fine platforms for dam inspections.  Standing up in the cockpit to get onto the ladder is dicier than a johnboat, but, hey, I had a budget and a schedule to meet.  Of course, practicing my double pump hardly slowed me down at all.  Sometimes I can’t believe I get paid for this stuff.

Photos are by Troy Biggs, PE.

Adam Van Grack got his new Backlund last week.  The photos speak for themselves.