Hi Mark,

It was only a year ago at this time that I was building my SWS, and I have to admit that I needed to go back to look at my pictures to be sure how I did it.  The fiberglass only goes on the deck surface.  I just neatly trimmed around my hatch opening once the epoxied glass was in a good enough state to allow that.  I did however brush a couple of coats of unthickened epoxy on the lip and other parts of the inner hatch after the excess fiberglass was cut away.

I would guess that you would have a difficult time to get the fiberglass to make those sharp edges to get down to the hatch lip anyway. 

Good luck with the rest of your build, and I hope you enjoy your SWS as much as I do mine.

Dave

Thanks, Dave. That's what I ended up doing.   

 Here's another question that's come up. In the SS manual, it shows to two small semi-circular pieces in the cockpit coming that are supposed to provided support for knee braces, yet these pieces are not included in my boat. Anybody know what gives?

Mark

I built my SWS from plans, and the pieces you are refering to were part of the front deck design, i.e. the cockpit cutout isn' t "oval" rather it includes the bump-outs for the knee braces.

I suppose you could always add these later as you see fit, and even shape them however you want.    Another thing to consider is the type of paddling you plan on doing.  If you only plan on liesurely, calm water paddles the knee braces would never be used anyway, however if you plan on rough water and rolling you will likely need to incorporate them unless you can get away with attaching the brace foam adequately under the existing coaming.
 

I hope that helps.

Dave

   That's interesting, Dave. CLC nust have changed their SS tooling recently, as my cockpit lacks those "ear" pieces. bTW, have you ever tried rolling your SS?

Mark

Hi Mark,

No I haven't rolled my kayak yet.  I'm still pretty new to all this stuff, with anything resembling something serious not starting until August of last summer.  I took a paddling skills course over the winter, and had one of the very experienced paddlers teaching me the layback roll the last two or three classes.  My two biggest problems were that none of the kayaks available were even close to fitting me properly ( I'm 6'3" 225lbs), and overthinking everything while rolling.  I'm determined to get it figured out though, because I really want to be able to go out when it gets a bit nasty on Lake Ontario.

Now that I also have learned the importance of proper knee braces I will have to install them on my kayak!

Dave