Here she is!  But I will not be happy with the esthetics of these pictures until everything is done.  The stern deck looks too heavy and is too heavy until I get the amas completed.  They are in the works.  Otherwise, this is everything from stem to stern.  (Click on the image for a larger view).

Running lights are on a bow mount and on top of a Leki pole (which doubles for portage and walking out if needed).  The Flat Earth Sail is a close color match to the Kevlar Evo and works great!  Because the boat has only one forward hatch, I’ve built a frame into the akas / crossmembers for all things not required to be kept dry in the hatch for camping.  Everything else I might ever need while on the water is near me.  I’m also carrying an extra, smaller rudder on the stern.

Yes, that is a pole spear mounted on the side.  I’ll get to that later, after describing the more likely-to-need things.  But here’s a joke:  When asking a woman with a bunch of weapons, “So what are you so afraid of?,” her response was, “Not a damn thing.”

Thanks to Mike and Flat Earth Kayak Sails (FEKS).  This is one of his 1 sqm sails, this size being the limit for Water Tribe events unless the sail can be reefed.    Also, given the small beam of a surfski, I’m not sure that anything larger could be carried.

There is absolutely no beam toward the bow, but mounting the sail to just in front of the cockpit (with room for the compass), the center of effort seems balanced, and the position gives me the widest reasonable point for the mast step and shrouds.   The mast “step” is a stainless steel bimini deck mount.  The shrouds are still a work-in-progress.  They are fine in light winds, but in gust of 20 knots and higher, the sail is pushed over.  I am soon going to add a second, lower pair of shroud lines, which should do the trick.  The deck loops are fat and low profile to avoid as much torque as possible.

The bungees from the mast to the bow are hard to see in the other pictures, but they pull the mast forward for me to stow the sail on the deck when not needed.  The bungees are pulled up and clipped around the sail with two S-biners.  If/when I get a higher aspect or larger FEKS, it will still fit nicely between the split bow lights.

The bungee also lets me pull the entire sail aft to immediately douse it if ever needed.

The bungee connects near the bow lift handle with a twisted shackle.  As one small lesson learned, I lost the pin once while setting things up on the sand.  So I added a short lanyard to it, and now it will even float (two small yellow floaters in the handle well)!

Cleats for the backstays are mounted on the tracks for the foot brace.

The block for the mainsheet is attached with a small Dyneema loop.  The line is always easy to find, but I’m not entirely happy with the location of the cleat.  At least with my drysuit on, the cleat is a bit too close to me and hard to reach with the suit’s puffiness.  On the other hand, a little practice and determination might give me the hang of it.

The centerline foam bracing is a nice thing about the mounting a sail on the Evo: there is no oil-canning of the deck.  You can see the centerline foam through the open hatch, including how I carved out some of the foam in order to more easily get equipment in and out.  Here is a look from the cockpit with the sail stowed.

The standard Evo hatch was only 4”, so one of the first transformations to an expedition surfski was to replace it with a 6” Sea Dog screw-in deck plate.  Nothing bigger will fit the area, but with a lot of shopping around, I was able to find equipment either small enough or thin enough to fit.  A Hennessy Expedition Hammock in snake skins is now a beautiful thing to me.  Equipment packing is a story for another time.

I spend way to much time on computers, and anything to do with water refreshes my spirit, letting me touch the real world while blowing everything else out of my brain.  Thanks to the Water Tribe for such an opportunity to explore more of life, and to share a bit of mine.

I take the tribe’s mission as two-fold.  First is to explore one’s self in expeditionary challenges: to feel and push against physical and mental limits.   I’ve not yet participated in any tribe events and so I’ve not earned any right to talk about myself under real trial.  Even in training, I’d be too embarrassed right now to say much about my sessions.  But the tribe’s second mission includes exploration of small craft themselves: designing for the many constraints of expedition “filters.”  The first challenge is merely to prepare for an event, and so my current challenge is in getting to the starting line.

Paddling my Think Evo is a great and glorious exercise, and now that I have a dry suit (a requirement for a sit-on-top craft in tribe events), I’m getting back in shape this winter.  But much of my preparation since early this summer has been transforming a production surfki into an expedition surkski.  While not the typical and ideal craft for this group’s expeditions, building an expedition surfski has been a fascinating experiment, and most of my next posts will be about this particular kind of small craft and in fitting all of the required equipment it must hold.   Being on the water provides my real thrill, but merely thinking about such an expeditionary craft has been a blast.

As a “newbie” to paddling, I have enormous appreciation for the lessons shared in The Water Tribe blogs,  forums, and articles.  The challenge is not to win, but to finish, and finishing or not, then to share.  Many elements of my design have incorporated my pouring over the wisdom of other tribers – with particular focus on safety and survival.   Mad Dog might be crazy, but he’s not stupid!  Safety will be one of my topics throughout.

All comments are appreciated.  If I get any terminology wrong, let me know.  I hope to keep learning from others and share in return.  Just be kind; this is still very experimental, and much more will shake out through test and actual challenge.

But this is all soooo cool!  Enjoy!

Happy man in dry suit (required for sit-on-tops), with comfy, bright head warmer.

Long distance toy carrier, with room to share.