I received the plans for the Sea Spirit from designer Bobby Curtis and started gathering materials in September 2000 and began construction October 11, 2000. At Bobby's suggestion, I first built a bench 20' X 2' and then laid out a 6" grid on 2 sheets of 4 millimeter Okoume plywood and started cutting out the panels for the hull. I jigged up my table saw with feather boards and ripped the 1/4" cedar strips for the deck construction. The fiberglass used was 4 oz. per square yard with multiple layers in certain high stress and/or wear points. The hull has two coats of paint and the deck has 5 coats of marine spar varnish.

 Five months and 260 shop hours later I have a kayak that performs beautifully in the water and is a joy to behold. The Sea Spirit is a very low volume hard chine 18.5' X 21" kayak with an especially low rear deck, which allows easy rolling and sculling. It was first launched at South Cove in Essex on March 10th with winds gusting to 25 knots. It tracked very well in all directions and loved the breaking waves.