Sea Kayaks and Sea Kayak Molds

Fiberglass sea kayak mold - 17 foot
with bulkheads and rear deck hatch. These molds are the basis of a commercial boat building exercise in the late 1980's. The final boat was initially called Mariah but carried other names as well. Ironically, most of the more recent designs are less fun and work worse than some of the better designs of the late 80's.

In the fall of 1985 I bought a set of fiberglass molds from Fiberglass George who got them from Link Hale.

Link had used an old-style Olympic Flatwater racing kayak as the basis for the hull design.
This gave a truly excellent rear section and the boat moves almost effortlessly through the water, but the bow did not provide enough bouyancy for surfing in big waves. The tooling design made it extremely difficult to assemble. And there were numerous other design flaws, from a marketing standpoint as well. Link's boat had the seat-bucket resting on the bottom of the boat, which created dangerous stress concentrations on the bottom of the boat, and it had no bulkheads and no hatches.

One of my long-time friends was getting ready to buy kayaks and explained that he was not interested in getting into a low-serial number adventure. I thought about it and decided that he was right, and wise.
So I redesigned the boat, piece by piece starting with the deck, adding a modern cockpit, flexible watertight bulkheads, deck-hatches and an easy to assemble hull-deck joint. Then I made a series of molds to address the plunging bow problem
The hull mold was cut-off about 4 feet from the bow and a series of bows were tried and boats were made for testing with varying amounts of initial and reserve bouyancy. The boat I am selling is the one I kept for myself.

Sea kayak / surf machine molds.

High-volume go-anywhere 13 foot fiberglass sport-boat based on '70's river-kayak hull-form mated with a very modern sea-kayak cockpit. Very fun boat, incredibly manuverable and responsive. Fits people with big feet or rubber boots on, like a touring boat, but performs like a river boat. Designed and built in the late 1980's and largely ignored until the market woke up. This boat got a lot of attention from manufacturers at TASK Sea Kayak Symposium in 2000. General idea has been copied widely since then. Big enough to carry gear for an overnight or longer.
Mold is in 4 sections, as is normal for Sea kayaks. Hull bottom, deck, cockpit ring and seat bucket, which hangs from the cockpit ring.

The hull and deck are laminated and trimmed in their separate female molds. The molds are then assembled (the molds index very precisely) and provide accurate support while the hull and deck are joined with a tape on the inside. Tape is easily applied through the large cockpit opening.
Cockpit ring is laminated primarily from glass cloth on a male mold that produces a shiny surface facing the outside, and it includes knee braces and the supports from which the seat bucket is suspended.

Ring is attached after the mold is removed from hull and deck.
Cockpit opening is deeply recessed into the deck to allow easy eskimo rolls.

These boats can safely be built in the 25 - 30 lb range using fairly conventional fiberglass and polyester resin laminates.