Petrel Sport

Product Description

The Petrel Sport is a comfortable and responsive 16 ft expedition kayak for active water, with a good turn of speed in a manageable size.

It retains the transitional chine that is a defining feature of the original 17 ft Petrel. The hull goes from soft-chined forward to hard-chined aft, enabling precise edging control for carving turns. Also like the 17 ft Petrel, the Petrel Sport has lots of rocker, for agile manoeuvrability in rough water. The boat has a reassuring stability in turbulent conditions.

The bow and stern are almost plumb (vertical), giving the Petrel Sport a long waterline for a relatively compact boat. Despite being a foot shorter overall, the Petrel Sport actually has a slightly longer waterline length than the Petrel and has a larger cockpit with more foot room for larger paddlers. This frees up your lower body for efficient, powerful forward strokes.

The Petrel Sport has ample capacity to carry gear for multi-day kayaking trips, but is still a fun boat for day paddling. For stowing your gear, the boat can be built with flush wooden hatches or the watertight rubber hatches typical of production sea kayak designs. Drawings for both options are included in the plans.

The Petrel Sport kayak is built using the strip-planking method: thin strips of wood are bent around a set of wooden forms side-by-side until the complete hull shape is built up. We recommend Nick Schade's book, Building Strip-Planked Boats, which covers the whole strip-planking process in depth.

Plans

The plans and building notes contain sufficient information to make it possible to build the boat from scratch. They include full size drawings for all the forms and bulkheads, as well as templates for cutting holes for the cockpit and hatches. They include patterns for both recessed rubber hatches and flush wooden hatches and also for a recessed deck-mounted compass.

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