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Think of a stitch-and-glue boat as if it were a banana.

- Sam Devlin, Devlin's Boatbuilding: How to Build Any Boat the Stitch-and-Glue Way

I want a little kayak. Not a long, sleek sea kayak. An oversized tub toy is more what I have in mind. Plenty of plastic ones available for not too very much money, but I have leftover plywood from boat number one, and miles to go before I sleep.

And, under the influence of madmen like Jim Michalak, I've decided I just might be able to both design and build my own boat. So I started sketching, and scribbling, and eventually building paper models, and the shape I finally arrived at looked so funny I just had to build it. Sort of a fat banana. Will it float? Most likely. With me in it, right side up? Probably. It really takes very little volume to support one skinny person. Will it be at all useful? We shall see.

Here are the bottom and upper side pieces cut out of one 4x8 sheet of cheap plywood, left over from the first boat, and the lower side pieces cut from another. Plenty of wood left for the decking and seat. I could probably get a bulkhead or two out of the scrap to make watertight compartments, but hey, it's wood, it floats already. And with the help of a life vest, so do I. Anyway, those bulkheads would mean a heavier boat. As long as we're going for small here, we might as well go for portable.

And here the upper and lower side pieces get glued together. In a boat that winds up having a good few complications, this is one thing I made simple. The two pieces go together at a 90° angle, making this step easy. I'm strengthening the joint with little chunks of 2x2, an idea I picked up working on violins with Andrew Dipper. Then the sides get glued to the bottom, which is as extremely bent as the sides. I'm holding it in curvature here with that good old standby, the Spanish windlass, while I stitch it together with wire. This is another job for PL Premium construction adhesive - I'm still not eager to mess with yummy epoxy. Maybe next boat.

Here's an apple-tree's-eye view of the boat so far - kind of pretty from this angle. The bits across the top are just to hold the thing in shape until I can firm it up with transoms and decking. That's one of the transom blocks resting on top of that chunk of 2x4. Then on goes the primer - just good old exterior latex - and from the side we can see how banana-shaped it's starting to look.

Well, I mentioned complications, and here comes one now. All those fun curves have to meet at the ends, and the transom pieces have to be bevelled to match the angles there. I ruined four or five nice chunks of 2x6 to get two that worked. Hope you keep your eye and ear protection as close to hand as I do - we only get issued one set of each.

A big moment - the back coaming going in.This will stiffen the boat up a lot. If I'd had the courage, I could have cut the coaming with just a slot on either end to lock into the sides, and put it in when I connected the sides to the bottom. But that courage would have been misplaced: this is a prototype, and I couldn't trust either the angles or the width to come out perfectly. So I just cut the coaming so it would drop in, with enough wood on the bottom to glue a second piece to, cut to fit the inside. The second picture here shows the two pieces clamped together.

On goes the back deck. I routed a slot in the coaming to hold the front edge of the deck. For the rest, I trusted to old bike inner tubes, and a couple of clamps. In spite of the impressive pile of kindling on the tail in this pic, it wasn't quite enough. A lot more pressure would have been nice to hold the after end of the deck down. So, I threw a shim and a lot of glue into the gap, and resolved to do better next time. Fine woodworking.

At this point, we took the thing over to Lake Nokomis and tossed it in the water. It did indeed float right-side-up, even with me in it. Found one slow leak. Pumped a wodge of glue into that general area and hoped for the best. More fine woodworking. I noticed that a gentle stroke of the paddle on one side of the boat tended to produce a 90° turn in the opposite direction. Not surprising, given the shape of the hull. It badly needed a skeg. I decided to fit Twin Skegs (patent pending). That will let the boat sit upright on the beach, and has the added advantage of reinforcing the exact place that the over-stressed cheap plywood was starting to delaminate. Fine woodworking, again!

We begin the painting. Did I mention that the boat is shaped like a banana? Well...I guess I'm just suggestible. Note the color chart pinned to the garage wall.

The Gunwales from Hell. Here's my lovely steam box. Popped in some 1x2s I'd carefully notched to fix the sides. Steamed 'em. Pulled 'em out and bent 'em. Let cool overnight. Noticed in the morning I'd bent them THE WRONG WAY. Cooked 'em again. Only broke one trying to bend it the right way. Cut more wood. Steamed it for AN HOUR! Came out and the stove had run out of gas. Wood cooling off. Trying bending anyway and broke another. Lather. Curse. Repeat.

October 7th, 2007. Once again summer has come and gone before the boat could be completed. Well, the boat was completed, but the costumes took a bit more time. But finally, Launch Day arrives, with a marathon making the launch site inaccessible in the morning, and a storm threatened in the afternoon. Our slim window of opportunity stays open, and after a few raindrops right at 3pm, the storm veers east and we have a hot, calm afternoon for fun. With a heart-felt push from Ute, I'm off!

The transom just didn't seem like the right place for the name, so "Top Banana - Port of St. Paul" gets relegated to a sticker on the side.

Here's that beautiful sticker again as Neal takes a turn. We had three boats out, so tons of people made it onto the lake that day.

Our friends took the theme and ran with it, showing up with edible fenders on their boat, the venerable Sea Clamp.

Marie even came dressed as a banana. All of this went way beyond the general "tropical theme" guidelines for the event, and we in no way condone this sort of behavior. Susy didn't build a boat this time out, but her hat took just about as long to build.

When the wind had died, all three boats came together as the two ash-breeze-powered vessels effected a daring rescue of the sail-unpowered vessel, which had done quite well getting to the middle of the lake. Light air performance not a strong suit.

Actually, we had to do that twice. Here's the other rescue in Living Cellphonovision (click the pic):

We did some serious stability testing when Susy came aboard as First Mate. What could possibly go wrong?

And yet, slowly, steadily, things did go wrong.


But hey! it's not a real stability test until it sinks.

Thanks to all of you who came and made it such a great party!
Special thanks to the photographers: Paul, David, Dick, John, Marie, Neal and to the cinematographer, Kathy.


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