Small part-time job offer. Looking for someone, who could draw plans for ~5m sit on top kayak type

There is no dry solution to wheels on poly kayak without beaching. Wheels in scupper holes simply more faster and easier. Wheels for my purpose don't need to be big or buoyant, no long distances and only concrete or asphalt. Front wheels should rest on top of kayak when flipped back, not from sides. If i get hit by large wave sidewise wheels will be least of my problems. I'm basing my ideas on long use of 4.09m long 0.72m wide poly kayak. I bought plans for similar hull shape, but a bit larger. 4.75m, 0.78m and up to 227kg load. Skiff or maybe narrow sailboat hull could work, but i don't know much how they handle in rough water. My experience is limited to poly kayaks and 6m to 14m fishing boats with inboard diesels. For efficiency long kayak is probably best anyway.

 

Steamboat Scanoe Steamboat https://steamboating.de/steamboat/steamboat-scanoe.php?select=propulsion

wheels on a car top steamboat

 

Check out www.thomassondesign.com click "English version". Fantastic resource on kajak design.

 

As for battery, I'd go for a realy small ligtweight 3kg 240Wh battery and a solar panel. Usual long distance effort is around 80W continous. A sunny day, you get about 210W to 245W per sqm high efficiency solar panel. (depending on latituden and season). Your could easily fit 0.3 sqm and cover all your energy needs. In cloudy conditions you could expect about 80% less output, but still around 15W. Together with 180Wh usable battery, you could motor at 75W continously for 3h.

 

Sorry to be "late to the party".

I hope your purchased boat plans are working out for you. I'm not trying to sell you anything... just telling you about my similar experiences.

I'm an avid kayaker and novice kayak/small boat designer/builder/operator. I'm very familiar with your Hobie Revolution sit-on-top as I used to own that same model as well as an I-14 and a Tandem Island. I'm attaching a photo of my Revolution 13 in between 2 of the wooden kayaks I designed and built. Those kayaks were purpose built for week-long expedition fishing trips we do in Canada. Those boats (almost identical) were fitted with Hobie mirage (pedal) drives. The boat in the foreground (my buddy's boat) was also fitted with a motor mount. He started with a 2.5 HP 4 stroke and was able to travel at 9 MPH. Later, the he switched to a small trolling motor/battery but his speed dropped to 3.5 MPH. For our needs (distance and speed) the gas motor was the better and lighter solution.

This wooden kayak is self-bailing and offers a very dry ride until the waves get big enough to crash well over the bow and into the boat. Then you can get a bit wet. The added floor structure makes the hull very strong and can easily accommodate load points for wheels, but the extra strength has resulted in a hull weight of 115 lbs without the motor or battery. This kayak is 18.5 feet long with a waterline beam of 26.7 inches. We built these as tandems, but for the fishing trips we always had just 1 guy in each boat due to the large amount of camping gear we took with us. There's a small hatch forward, and a very large hatch aft. With the low CG it is easy to keep upright, but the narrower (than Hobie) hull form results in much better speed when pedaling, paddling, or motoring. These boats are made using 4mm marine plywood that was machine cut from my design files. Construction method is stitch & glue using epoxy and the exterior and interior have a layer of 6 oz glass cloth. Overall, this design has served us very well. I sold my kayak and designed and built a 17 foot motor beach cat that uses a 10 HP motor. My buddy still owns his kayak. I'm in the early stages of designing my next boat, and I'm going to be asking for some help from this group before I get too far along on that one.

Russ

 

Kayaks looks nice and also location seems rather interesting, perfect for kayaking. My Hobie is newer model with different chair, which i enjoy a lot and main reason that fishing during winter is still fun, those several cm above hull make that big of a difference in comfort and dryness. Stability doesn't suffer at all.

I really like the idea of kayak with inboard electric motor and eventually want to build one, should be really fun to use here. But for now had to leave this idea until better times, this project was for fun mostly. There are lots of problems appearing for my main goal, starting from Jazz 30 catamaran plans data loss and being redrawn from scratch, getting close to a year now, to many unnecessary trips to different offices for permits and documents due to local officials incompetence. 28ft mono that i bough in spring also getting late, supposed to arrive in the beginning of June after repairs and maintenance, still not here, mostly thanks to a major mistake during registration transfer by local fisherman association. The cost of this mistake could easily cover all material costs for wooden kayak expect perhaps li-ion batteries. And extra time i spent should be enough to finish building

 

I'd take that jemwatercraft plans and use software to stretch the hull, while keeping cockpit same length, unless you are stretched yourself (over 6ft).

that sort of boat will do fine stretched or shrunk 30%.

I'm guessing stretched will be easier to build, since wood bends not as sharp.

Or I've got a Tarpon 16i with rudder and seat, plugs and 240 AND 220 cm paddles I'm willing to let go for about $600. In SF bay area, CA, USA.