Well, here's an update. I did a water test on the hull. The shape is rather pleasing, after some changes to the original design, made mostly on the fly because of construction techniquies, measurements, etc. It is more "slab-sided" than I intended. Also, the V-bottom is not uniform -more pronounced to the bow, flattens out midships. I wanted it thin, and chickened out a little and probably didn't make the bottom as narrow as I had intended (a good thing, you will see). The biggest unitentional change, is it has a lot of rocker.
Well, the water test only found one small leak in the center joint of the bottom. I will probably fibreglas the bottom of the hull on this one, which should take care of that. But I also climbed in to paddle around. Oops, it was way more tippy than I expected. I was able to paddle around, but eventually dumped it.
It may be partly because it is more narrow than my other boats. My Cruising Mouse has more rocker, a very pronounced V-bottom, and it is very stable. But...it is about 8 inches wider too. It may also be that it rides too high (more displacement for my weight), and would settle in with more weight. But there's not much freeboard, so I don't want to carry water ballast or anything like that. I will continue the build, and see if it's something I can get used to and feel safe with. If not, I will add outriggers on the rear, hopefully far enough back to not interfere with paddling.
I'll try to get some pics up of the hull, and the finished boat.
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