Iqyax Update (MAE 593)

The Iqyax, from David Zimmerly's drawing of MAE-593,  is done, floats, paddles. I started this but FireFox crashed, so I probably lost some of it. Definitely lost some writing. Later.

Tentative

The  split bow. The piece running horizontally may not be historically correct, but it does 'fair' the line to the second stringer. The First Stringer (lowest) starts farther back. 

Aft. Should be nothing unusual here. If you look close you can see how I bolted the drain fitting to the Aft-board. See below for more info on the drain. I split and reglued the aft-board because it was warping.
The Ballistic Nylon, coating and sewing materials came from Corey Freidman of the Skinboat store and workshop. Great skin boat builder, teacher, supplier, resource. I watched his videos dozens of times. I really loved sewing the skin.  I think I used the 850 Ballistic Nylon skin. Great stuff.


My Iqyax is done, I've been paddling it.


 The coaming turned out nice, actually the second coaming turned out nice.

Without the outriggers (ama) it's too tippy.
The outriggers work great, are really lightweight and do not sit in the water all the time. Just the poles and the floats stabilize the Iqyax, instead of being jittery it's just tippy. Major change. Many kayaks could benefit from this style outrigger. You get stability, safety but very little increased drag.

I'll try to add some photos.

Alamitos Bay Beach, The outriggers, rudder parked. I can reach back and adjust the outriggers from the cockpit. I first planned to have two outrigger poles (iako) and I designed my floats (ama) for two or three. These are the third set of floats I've made. They usually just 'kiss' the water instead of ride in it. If I get going, lean to one side to plant the float, I don't turn in that direction. They are tall. I wanted the volume to be at least as much as a good paddle float so that if I need to use them for reentry I wouldn't have a problem.
NOTE: buoyancy and floats. We've all pushed a beach ball below the surface, and it popped up and smashed us in the face. Most of us have a 'common sense' understanding that the more you sink something buoyant, the more it pushes up. What is not 'common sense' or intuitive is that once a float is submerged--the push-up increase stops. Whatever force is needed to push it under is all the force needed to move it anywhere underwater. Suppose you have a float that provides 22 pounds of buoyancy, (this is 10 kg which means that it has 10 liters of volume and doesn't weigh very much, 10 liters is about 10 quarts). If you attach 22 pounds of weight to it, then it will be 'neutrally buoyant' meaning any more weight will sink it. Once something is neutrally buoyant, very little additional force will be able to make it sink to the bottom of the ocean or keep it near the surface. For an outrigger, this means that once you've submerged it--going all the way around is easy. If you need that float, it needs to be more than what you need it for.  (If this isn't clear, let me know. Might save your life.)

This is the 'pretty picture' none of the add on stuff that keeps me from drowning. Weighs about 45 pounds. As pictured without outriggers: Aleut Suicide Machine. (At some point I'll find a young paddling prodigy and let him put this fella through his paces. [Oh, you didn't know? kayaks, iqyax are male.]

I had to install a rudder. Something is amiss with the hull, the Keelson looks dead straight, but the iqyax turns in a big left circle about 100 meters in diameter. Pretty bad. I'm embarrassed to have to confess this. I use the rudder as trim, I've got two lines running to it and held in jam cleats. It's a bit cumbersome setting it, but once set I can leave it until I change direction and encounter different currents, etc...)

So far it's kind of a slow craft. I was 4.3 knots consistently in my Great Auk, 17' 23" beam. And about the same in my Mystery 20' 16" beam (but no GPS just times over the same routes). The iqyax seems to be about 3.3 knots. This is all smooth ocean, light winds. I'm not in as good a shape as I was a few years ago, but I'm not a slug, so....I also might be running the iqyax off beam through the water because of the turning problem and the rudder correction. I think I've demonstrated (but not proved) that skin boats can be as fast as solid hulls. But I'm not even close to figuring out what the Aleuts were able to do.
Below is the drain I put at the aft end on top. It's 1" PVC a threaded male fitting, bolted to the the vertical aft-board--right through the center of the fitting and nutted on the other side of the aft-board. This works really well!  I keep a few of the caps in my car. I just need to make a piano wire retaining clip, around the bolt inside and right through the center of the cap. This drains the hull really well. I'll install this on my wooden yaks when I get to it. Better than the little black one with the two screws. The rubber padding is just 1/4" yoga mat. Great stuff. I just cut a slightly smaller hole in the ballistic nylon and stretched it on to the fitting.