The International Canoe

Hi all

My seat is in one piece with carbon on the three edges but I'm still not sure if it's watertight. I tried blowing into the bung hole but I don't think I can blow in enough volume to pressurize the seat. I tried putting a vacuum cleaner over the bung and it sounded like the motor struggled a bit but how would you know. What do you guys do to test the integrity of the construction. I haven't coated the seat with epoxy yet but I assume ply is air tight. Should I just "Suck it and see" once the boat is launched?

I'd just go with it and if you get water in it address it then - I've spent quite a bit of time trying to stop all the leaks in mine, and I'm pretty happy now but I'm glad I just went sailing with it than wasting hours ashore chasing potential leaks.

If you put in the bungs in the cool of the morning and then put the seat out in the sun for a while you should get a little woosh of air as you remove the bung.

The pictures of your boat posted on Sailing Anarchy look great.

Thanks Christian & Chris

I'll try the bung thing but unfortunately here in Australia we only have a temperature difference of about 5 degrees (just kidding, couldn't resist, I'm sure the ice is nearly melting in the states,)

I'm pretty happy with the boat but I'm sure I'll be posting more questions as I get closer to sailing.

Chris, if you're talking to Tony Arends say g'day from me. We worked together and against each other for a few cups. He's got a pretty cool A cat on the go.

Unfortunately having the seat fill up with water is a good way to have a very bad sail. So some attention to this detail makes your life much much nicer.
The best way to assure that you have a watertight seat is to see if it holds pressure. I use something like a water level so I can see if the seat loses pressure. If it does, then I try to figure out where and do an epoxy job on it. The unfortunate thing about the wood seat design is that there is about half a mile of places for the seat to leak but a small paintbrush and some thickened epoxy around all he glue joints probably does the trick. You can then resort to bubble tests to see if you have got it right.
SHC