Fourteen Foot Baidarka Rebuild

This particular boat suffered the indignity of shrinking skin which caved in a good percentage of its ribs.  So I decided that it was time to rebuild the boat.  Aside from replacing damaged ribs, I also wanted to elevate the rear deck and make the cockpit coaming level.  I had lowered the rear deck to make rolling the boat easier but as it turned out, lowering the back deck simply made it harder to get good back support. So on with the pictures.

What happened was that the nylon skin shrank to such an extent in the hot California sun that it caved in the ribs. Not only did the shrinking skin recurve the ribs, it broked them.  A few ribs at either end of the boat survived.

Slitting the stitching on the deck.

Slitting the lashings around the coaming which hold the skin to the coaming.

The skin has been slit all around, ready to pull it off.

Except for the ribs, the hull is in mostly good shape.

The first step in getting the bad ribs out is to unlash them from the keelson..

The tail fin is looking a bit ragged.  It was made out of plywood and I decided to replace it with redwood.

For some reason I added a deck beam for better foot support without taking the other deck beam out. So that deck beam toward the front had to come out.

Here,s the stuff I took off the boat, coaming, coaming stanchions, tail fin and both the fore and aft deck stringers.  I took off the deck stringers just to make putting the new ribs in easier.

Here's the extra deck beam removed and all the bad ribs.

I already added a new tail fin.

There's the hull stringers hanging out in space waiting for support from a new set of ribs.

Next we will be bending some new ribs, followed by some painting and varnishing and relashing all the stuff that came off during the deconstruction. Stay tuned.