ron-t kayaking blog

14 August 2013 .............. The Swellies

I took the plunge, and made some more changes to the bow of my boat - including adding rocker, and adding a bit of a curve to the overhang. I think I`ve added a bit too much curve - it`s one of these optical illusion things - if the overhang is absolutely straight, it looks as if it curves upwards. So I added a bit of a downward curve to it, but I`ve overdone a bit.

One of things I`m glad to get rid off was the rather sharp knuckle where the overhang joins onto the main hull keel line. It was rather sharp - good for a touring boat, not so good for a boat more oriented towards play and surfing.

Just as an aside - there seems to be a difference on opinion on whether the word should be "oriented" or "orientated" - put in whichever version you feel happiest with !

Because of the increased rocker, the hull cross section just behind the knuckle is now flatter than it was, which is another advantage for a play/surf boat.

So it has all been a bit of an epic, with lots of reshaping - adding bits, then taking away a lot of it, adding more bits, taking part of it away again, and so on.

The result ?

Magic !

Today I went back to the Swellies - it was close to Neaps, and I wanted to see if there was any kind of wave at the South Cardinal Marker, and if there was, what it would be like.

There certainly was a wave, and it was excellent for playing on - a lot more user friendly than it is during Springs, as it is a lot more chunky during Springs.

It was very inconsistent as a wave - it changes shape every thirty seconds - so you have to continually move side to side across it to find the best bit. But despite that I got some quite long sessions on it - and today was the first time on Anglesey that I got to do some paddle twirls. Nine twirls was the highest number I got to before losing the wave.

It will be interesting to see how the wave develops at the different tidal ranges between Springs and Neaps.

Another factor is that I still have to do a fairly major reshape at the back of the boat - this will make the back end much looser, so should again help the play/surf characteristic of the boat.

One of the somewhat unplanned for characteristics of the long overhang is that on just the right wave, it pearls - or purls. For about a minute or so of the whole time I was there, the wave suddenly got steeper, and the bow dipped down and it pearled beautifully - it`s a magic sensation.

I`m going to have to move my splits, because they were getting in the way of the water flowing over the deck.

I`ve built a sea squirt boat !

I know that conventional sea kayak design says that the tendency to pearl is dangerous, you need to have lots of volume in the bow to stop it happening, and certainly at times it is beneficial - but pearling is good fun at the right time. As usual, you can`t have it all ways.

Just for future reference, the previous low tide height was 1.5 metres at Holyhead, and the next high tide height was 4.8 metres at Holyhead, so the tidal range at Holyhead was 3.3 metres. The wave started working very roughly 3 hours after low water at Holyhead, and lasted for about an hour.

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