Building the Matunuck surf kayak

Izzy has just finished painting his Matunuck

This has been a very difficult project for me. It started a few years ago when I first tried to build the Matunuck and failed. The bonfire was spectacular.
Now I am on my way to success and have learned a few lessons along the way.
If possible its better to buy a kit with all the panels already cut out , this gives you a perfect starting point and excellent accuracy. Just transferring the  plans from paper to plywood introduces a small margin of error, then cutting them out introduces another small error so that in the end you loose some perfection. The process is pretty forgiving but lack of accuracy becomes difficulty in stitching later on and with this kayak joining the hull and deck is a major project in itself. The bending of the bow and the tension produced makes the work quite challenging and if you have a few inaccurate bits it becomes near impossible.
This is the major difficulty, once overcome the rest is pretty straight forward.
At present there are 5 of us all building this boat. Izzy has just about finished and has done a great job with the painting, Guy is also in the final stages and I have just began the fiberglass after joining the deck and hull. Itai has finished the assembly of the hull and deck and now is starting to join them together. Fiber reinforced packing tape is not available here and the local products just dont have the holding power needed so we resort to straps, ropes and I even used wire for stitching.Meir is still joining the cutouts.
One advantage of communal building is the fact that we can share and help each other as needed.
Soon we will all be out on the water.
Watch this space for more details.