Roughly Rite

The story of a Chesapeake 17 kayak, so far.

By David Grimshaw, owner and paddler of Roughly Rite

Written starting 12 November 2014

Blog 1

Was it the year 1997 or 1998? This is the question one asks themselves after all this time has passed about when this story started.  I do think it was 1997 when I first discovered the Chesapeake Light Craft web-site.  It had beautiful pictures of wooden kayaks made from plywood.  It had always been a lifetime goal for me to build a boat.  I have no particular history with these sort of projects and had helped my father and grandfather on some handyman jobs before, but was about to learn that I did not know so much about these type of jobs.  I looked at the website and visited it frequently in my web browser.  I really wanted a kayak but did not want to pay what I thought was the high cost of purchasing one.  The market for second hand kayaks was terribly small and inappropriate boats were advertised; this had been the case on previous occasions I had the ‘pang’ for a kayak to paddle.  So I decided I would build one of the Chesapeake kayaks.  I ordered plans for a Chesapeake 17 on the internet and paid with my credit card.  I also had grandiose ideas that Dad and guests would come paddling with me, so I ordered plans for the Chesapeake Double also.  I cannot remember how much this cost me, but something like $75 American dollars comes to mind.  Chesapeake Light Craft also sells kits for these kayaks; That is, you can buy the plywood already cut and can even get a complete kit with no need to shop for anything but paint.  However getting a kit had its problems: the kits had to come from America which made the freight costs very high; the Australian dollar was only $0.65 to the American $1, so, therefore, I would have had to pay nearly double the cost of a kit; I was re-assured that the Chesapeake 17 type was very easy to construct (only 40 hours, according to the web-site).  So, with costs again the major issue, I ordered plans and decided to build from scratch.  I also asked for a catalogue of their boats; this catalogue had many lovely pictures of plywood boats which made me fall in love again with the idea of having my own plywood boat.

Chesapeake Light Craft was a company in America that sold plans, made kits, and sold boat building supplies mostly for wooden kayaks.  I am not too sure if their range had expanded into the other small boats that they now offer in 2014.  They were a company that oozed a positive mental attitude.  I also became aware of another company that did much the same called Pygmy Boats.  Pygmy concentrated on selling complete kits rather than plans; to my memory the only kayak they offered in plans, in those 1997 days, was the Queen Charlotte.  I chose the Chesapeake 17 instead of the Queen Charlotte because of the positive and lengthy upbeat writing on the web-site that Chesapeake Light Craft had about their boats and the addictive web-site of Chesapeake Light Craft – I wanted to be a part of their family.  The Pygmy Boats web-site was basic, by comparison, and the Queen Charlotte looked a bit crude with its upper-deck appearance.  Did I make the right choice?  Who knows; as someone wrote on a forum once, they are all boats and one is probably not any better than the other.  The Chesapeake may have been easier to build as I think the Queen Charlotte needed forms to shape the ply over.  I would like to build a Pygmy boat one day, but because they only offer kits for most of their boats this may not occur; also, you can only have so many boats and I may need to sell some kayaks off before increasing my fleet.  Chesapeake also had a builders forum on the web and this became an addictive thing for me to watch; unfortunately it was not much help to the builder because you are asking other new builders your question and they do not have any more idea how to solve your problem than you did in the first place – but it was still additive.   End blog 1.