Polynesian Outrigger Paddles

The paddles we were commissioned to build are ready.
They will be decorative items but are built for the water.  Koa is one heavy wood.  Those outrigger crews must have been strong!

Here are photos of the process...

Handle pieces with hardwood dowel visible.

Blades shaped, before routing the shaft.

Epoxying the koa handles to the cherry shaft.

Fully shaped and rounded.  Ready for finish.

The depressions on a truck's tailgate are intended for Linseed oil.  Most people don't know that.

Oiled wood not yet varnished

Applying linseed oil brings out the beautiful patterns in the Koa.

After several coats of spar varnish.  Ready for a trip to the next island.

USCG certified capacities for the MRS

After a few back and forth e emails with the Coast Guard clarifying the formulas, we have the certified Maximum Capacity numbers for the Mississippi River Skiff.
They are as follows:

MWC  717 pounds
MPC    497 pounds (calculated with a 20 HP motor)  This is Person Capacity
 Number of Persons  4
 Maximum Horse Power  20

As we ran through the numbers we found the size and width of the skiff could handle up to a 35 hp motor.  But through our testing we felt it should be limited to a 20hp to keep the stern from squatting too much.
So if we limited the HP to 20 the formula allows for more person capacity.  This brought us up to 3.75 persons.  With the addition of 3.15 cubic feet of flotation, the skiff is certified for these numbers.  We will be adding floatation this week.
The USCG has tables for calculating engine. battery and fuel tank weights.  To see them, follow this link:
uscgboating.org/regulations
Or This one:
Gov Printing Office How you arrive at these figure is as follows:

Sinking!

We received our Manufacturers ID from the Coast Guard awhile back.
Our ID is "SEA", awesome.
Any builder of boats has to register with the Coast Guard and meet regulations for safety.
On our application we listed the Mississippi River Skiff as one of our models.  We have since decided to move on to the next design and not produce additional hulls of the MRS.

The de-watering with a submersible sump

Filler up!

But the Coast Guard, now under the auspices of Homeland Security called and wanted us to certify that the MRS meets regulations.
To do this there are calculations that need to be done.  They all start with the maximum capacity of the craft.  This is the weight that sinks the boat to the shear line.

  

To do this we hauled the skiff over to the pool at the house of our friends the Walters.  We shot a video of the whole sinking that we were going to compress into a high-speed clip. Unfortunatly the battery died and corrupted the file.
We did have a successful sinking.  The skiff stayed in trim and evenly sank to its shear line until water spilled in and out but would sink no further.
There are no floatation compartments.  It is simply built of wood encapsulated in a glass/epoxy skin.
It took 72 minutes at a flow rate of 6.451 gpm.
This equals 464.472 gallons.
At 8.33 pounds per gallon, the maximum capacity is 3,869.052 pounds!
We will tackle the rest of the Coast Guard calculations tonight.

Back to our roots: wooden paddles

We received a commission to make two outrigger paddles.
The client purchased some beautiful Koa wood on a trip to Hawaii and it just recently arrived.
The wood will make two figured blades and handle pieces.
The Koa blank is 3 inches thick 20 inches long and about 9 inches wide with a bark edge.

Today we cut the blank down to 4 blade parts of 5/8 ths thick and 4.5 inches wide.

The off-fall will be cut to make the handles.  The remainder will be returned to the customer for future use.  This stuff is beautiful and precious!

With Cherry shafts cut

Mystery board

  

We had an inquiry about the all glass board in some of our photos.
It is not for sale.  It is a model we developed in association with Shane Perrin as a prototype.
Shane is an accomplished SUP distance racer with several amazing records under his belt.
This spring he paddled from Tampa to Key West!
Together we developed a big stable board for river paddling.  Shane has since been picked up as a sponsored rider for Glide SUPs and we ended our development process.
We did manage to make a great paddling board and sold three before the plug was pulled (actually it was cut up).

Doing a little gunboatin down in Bama.

We at Sea State are going to use the design concepts we developed on this prototype and begin an new hollow all glass board project in the coming weeks.

Stay tuned...

SUP Delivery

We delivered a set of SUPs and paddles to Tree house Marina near Cullman Alabama.
This was a big order for us and through the process of making the boards in quantity instead of one at a time, we developed some improvements.
Earlier boards had internal stringers of glass laminated ply running the length of the board,  This was sturdy but heavy and it is totally out of site once the board is together.   This means there is no way to inspect it.  I wanted to lighten the hull and happened upon using the carbon fiber tube we manufacture.
So now all Sea State SUPs are built with Carbon Fiber tube internal supports.  They are incredibly strong in compression and of course light and water proof.
This was a big improvement.
We also moved from pre-glassing the top decks to glassing in place.  This removed a step and it turns out also improves the appearance.

Here are some photos:

4 of our boards on the dock at Tree House Marina in Alabama

Our raw carbon fiber tube

New paddles prior to their gloss coat