Re: Curious - why remove?

Posted by LeeG on Jan 13, 2005

The place where Karl will stress the kayak is the aft deck during entry/exit in normal use and rescues when his entire weight can be in one spot, after that wide areas in the bottom panels that don't have glass on the interior spanning the horizontal surfaces where the kayak could be sitting on a rock in the sand. The top of the coaming is strong already from the arch and coaming stack. Anything that could make the top of the coaming crack in normal use (without a deck beam) would probably have ripped off the coaming and done all manner of damage to the person in the kayak. The Chesapeake coaming stack is 28mm thick(6mm,18mm,4mm),the Arctic Hawk stack is 20mm (4mm,12mm,4mm). I don't see how the Chesapeake deck could be weaker than an Arctic Hawk deck that it requires another 24mm of wood (8mm difference plus approx 18mm of deck beam). I've seen the decks of unglassed Chesapeakes and Patuxents with water stained stress cracks above the thigh brace area where a strong paddlers knees flexed up the unglassed 3,4mm decks. And that's with 1" thick deck beams in place. In other words the deck beam had no relation to the stresses put upon the deck in use. For anyone with a Northbay the fit is somewhat tighter than Karl in a Ch18. Every little bit helps.

In Response to: Re: Curious - why remove? by FrankP on Jan 13, 2005

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