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Well, a couple of weeks ago, we participated, as part of kayaking classes, of an eskimo roll intruduction. The original S and G Guillemot, which passed to my wife after I built the strip version, didn't have bulkheads installed, just a couple of large publicity bottles, which were more than enough in case of an emergency.
If the sprayskirt doesn't fail, rolls are perfectly feasable in this state, but, particularly during the learning process, sprayskirts do fail. Even though the floats will never let the kayak sink, the amount of water coming in is so large, it gets quite impossible to manage the boat, and a trip to shore is necessary.
As the S and G Guillemot was already closed, and access to the places where the hatches should go is difficult, the system used in hatches as used in the strip built Guillemot was almost impossible. The selected system, with a raised hatch, has resulted very effective, though somewhat involved to construct.
Below are a couple of drawing using angles which I measured on my boat. Yours might be slightly different, though probably near enough to use the drawings anyway. Of course, if you want to apply this method for another boat, you're on your own.
If the work was realized with some care, you'll have hatches that close quite well. The ones described here survived (actually the next day) 5 hours of winds of more that 20 knots, and waves over 1 meters (which is quite a lot for our small lake). Not only were the hatches perfectly sealed, after opening them you could still appreciate the smell of the last coat of varnish.
Continues with phots of the construction (1)
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(c) John Coppens ON6JC/LW3HAZ |