I'm a beginner and I've built these two 13' SOF's for my wife and I. They are inspired by Tom Yost's Sea Tour 15 but are considerably wider at 31 inches. Comparing them with the behavior of plastic boats I paddle around in the reservoir near my house I'd say they perform quite well and are very stable.

The Red Boat
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-f6TMSl0XiDk/Th_kPl13S6I/AAAAAAAAALg/gWUma89UhRU/s800/IMG256.jpg

The Blue Boat
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-g36TwbzP15I/Th_vsjJ1-II/AAAAAAAAAL4/EKqoCnhU3MY/s800/DSCN1285.JPG

Nick,
Thank you for sharing your new boats with the group. I think you'll find this a very open forum with experienced paddlers that are very willing to give well thought out answers to your questions as your paddling skills progress.

Welcome to the group.

Michael

Thanks for the welcome Michael, I see you're from Seattle, I've been looking at Puget Sound on google earth and I think I need to make a trip some day.

My Wife and I have been paddling these boats for a few months now and we are in love. I've taken a few tours with my big brother as well. These boats are extremely well suited for there intended purpose; High desert and alpine lakes and alkaline seas in fair to moderate conditions. They have the stability of the big beam recreational (maybe inflatable) kayak with similar tracking and bottom angles to a fifteen foot, hard chine, SOF touring kayak. We easily pass all of the rotomolded consumer boats that are commonly deployed here (12 foot minus and inflatables) and only spent $300 dollars per boat.

The necessity for the boats' design arose out of need to provide a cheap, beginner inland craft that could carry all of my adventure and lake camping crap and my wife's full figure.

The coaming opening is huge at twenty-four inches; you can easily sit sideways in the boat, shove off and tuck your legs in whenever you like if ever. The boats will displace about 350 lb. with around a half-inch of freeboard. In good weather with no spray skirt, fishing gear, cameras, whatever is easily accessed from the ample storage space.

The massive oak (red boat) and redwood (Blue Dragonfly) floor boards could accommodate whatever kind of seat you want; I've got a dual density foam seat pad made from back-packing sleeping pads of various grades. Custom float bags were fabricated as well.

I have found that the boats are ideal for up to fifteen mile a day paddles for three or four days on end with a VERY high level of comfort; my bro. and I crossed Utah Lake in full moon light; a cool 12 mile trip for a couple of high desert dudes in homemade redwood stick boats... pretty sweet.

Here is an album link to some photos of the boats on various outings...

https://picasaweb.google.com/108206584620469731398/KayakRandom?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Nick,
Only one out of three of your links is working. Anyway, I admire your ambition in building and designing your own boats.

I'm not so sure I understand the point about the half inch of freeboard with 350 lbs on board.

Hmmm... I see about the picture links, I can only get two of them to come up myself. Well here is the link to the "build" album, we'll see if that works.

https://picasaweb.google.com/108206584620469731398/TheKayakProject?authuser=0&feat=directlink

And as for all the load carrying capacity is concerned, the boats were designed to accommodate a 250 lb. paddler and some very luxurious camping gear for several days on large mountain reservoirs. You can scratch 400 lbs. of displacement pretty quickly. I myself am a fairly slight person but most of the corn fed Americans (my friends) I'm trying to get excited about this whole home made kayak thing are not. Hence the SOF kayak design for massively enhanced Americans. Plus, it really is nice to just kind of lounge around in that big boat; seriously, you can stand up and take a leak out of it.