Outfitting the tandem kayak, Part 4: The bulkheads

Okay, enough small talk.  Time to start doing some actual work.

Bulkheads are walls that seal off chambers in the bow and stern of a boat.  They are a safety feature, as they prevent the boat from filling entirely with water in the event of a capsize.  When combined with hatches in the deck, they allow for storage space for camping gear.

When installing the bulkheads, or doing any other work inside a boat, it's nice to have as much access to the inside as possible.  So the next step for me is to go ahead and cut the holes for the hatches.

Here is the boat without hatches:

Since I will be making my own hatch covers, the shape of the hatches is entirely up to me.  I know I want the hatches to be as big as possible; I own a couple of large dry bags and on previous trips I have really had to cram them hard to get them stored in boats with smaller hatches.  So I have designed the stern hatch good and big, while the bow hatch, though smaller, is still a good size for easy access.  On a piece of paper, I drew a half-trapezoid, and then traced around margarine lids to round off the vertices.  Then I used the pattern to trace the shape onto the deck of the boat, flipping it over so the hatch will be nice and symmetrical with respect to the boat's long axis.  The bow hatch pattern is pictured at right.

Once the hatches were laid out, it was time to cut.  It takes some real confidence in what you're doing to take an electric reciprocating saw to a beautiful boat.

 And here is the boat after the hatch holes have been cut.

Most of the bulkheads I have seen are made of minicell, but I was looking for a way to avoid the use of minicell here because it's hard to make a minicell bulkhead truly watertight.  I called up Doug Bushnell, the man who made this boat, to ask for advice.  He told me to use any piece of one-eighth-inch plywood, making sure it's well coated in epoxy to make it waterproof.  Since I have no shortage of plywood scraps lying around, this was no problem.  At left is the plywood for the stern hatch.  I kept cutting and test-fitting until it fit the cross-section of the boat aft of the stern.  My bandsaw was very helpful in this process; lacking a bandsaw, I would have used the reciprocating jigsaw and rasps.

Mr. Bushnell pointed out that I did not want the plywood to fit snugly inside the boat, because it would wear a ridge onto the outside of the deck and hull.  I'm very glad he told me that, because I would have driven myself crazy trying to create a perfect fit.  Here is the plywood in place, with some gaps visible.  The gaps will be filled in with thickened epoxy.

Here is the plywood for the bow bulkhead, also with gaps in places.

I'll tell you some more in my next post.