Building An Outrigger Sailing Canoe

Hi there and welcome to my canoe build!  Time to finish her. A Pygmy Boats, Taiga Wilderness Canoe, purchased as a kit about ten years ago, assembled the hull, glassed the outside and epoxied the inside. She's been in storage ever since so I have named her Mis Años Diez, "My years Ten".

See Pygmy Boats for specs.  So far my plans call for a beefed up hull with extra glass, decking with dry storage under, outriggers, sail, rudder and possibly if funds allow, a pedal prop of some sort which are pretty expensive, most everything else I can fabricate from recycled wood or metal.

Outer hull needed sanding prior to adding another layer of 6oz cloth.  Had to order more from Pygmy seeing as I used up all the original kit materials on other projects over the years...

Sanding complete...

Taped and glassed inside midseam prior to more glassing inside the hull and adding decking supports which I'm cutting out of 3/8" exterior plywood, patterned with the original hull forms, being saturated with epoxy and curing as I type...

Spoke with Kelly at Pygmy yesterday and so it seems nobody has ever done what I plan to do with their canoe design.  Hope it works out well!  No drawn plans to go by, just thoughts and probably some trial and error but such is the way of things when I set out to build something.

Have never sailed a boat so that too will be a learning experience.  I'm studying lots of web info and video on various builds and sailing but nothing can compare with hands on experience.  It ought to be interesting at least and likely will make some cringe and others laugh their asses off. :)

This is not my first boat build.  Prior to this hull build I completed a Pygmy Coho Kayak and made their builder list but nobody ever called to have me build one until very recently.  I did not have a suitable workshop at the time and so I ended up selling the fella my Coho that had only been used for 30 minutes and caused my legs to go numb due to an old and ever present lower back injury. I hope he's enjoying it.

Other than that I have built a couple of Pirogue style canoes from plans and a mini pontoon out of my head that was pretty cool for awhile. 

Building boats is in my blood I guess.  Something to do and I love doing it so here we go again! I'm building this boat, hopefully well enough to handle the rough stuff. May very well need it to if I get brave enough to do what I'm thinking would be awesome.  A trip down the Arkansas River to the Mississippi and down to the Gulf of Mexico...and from there, who knows? :)

That's about it for now until I get some more done.  Stay tuned!