Hi Gary,
Just yesterday our entire jr. high went to Mission Bay and launched our outrigger. It has been two years in the making, and came out great. I've paddled the Molokai Channel race and have plenty of seat time in larger canoes, and I was impressed with how well your/our little 16'er works. Fast boat, although some weathercocking was evident as the wind built. I'll work on that as rigging experience improves. She's 6oz sheathed on the bottom up to the yellow topsides, and she's built of 6mm Harbortek meranti ply. We did our own scarf joints (I'm the math teacher too); in fact, the whole boat was built in my classroom with zero fancy shop tools! The ama is selected Home Depot 1X6's stacked cake fashion, but we cut the interior out as we went, so it's essentially hollow. Very cheap that way, but a lot of power planing. The beams were simple laminations of HomeDepot cheap pine and WEST.
Scot Copeland
Julian, CA
The ama was built the way we used to make model boat hulls.
Lots of planing and sanding though.
What a nice way to build an authentic-seeming ama that need not be as a heavy as a real log but asks for some of the same hand-crafting that a "native ama" would have -- nice teaching moment, and then a practical fairly cheap ama later. Nice project for the kids!
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