The original hull had a rather bulbous canoe stern which never stirred my soul (much less contribute anything to the function of the hull).

Beyond any rational reasons for this radical surgery--the safety and convenience of a step transom, the longer waterline, a more efficient rudder design, increased cockpit and storage area-- there is only one true motivation for such a labor of love: aesthetics.

The procedure for fabricating the new transom was essentially the same as I used on my cedar strip canoe 20 years ago. Photo (1) shows the development of the station sections that define the shape of the transom. Next I fabricated the new step transom (2), and installed it permanent in place as station #1. The hull form was built up with the Corecell bead and cove planking system. In the photo (3) you can see the final station sections glassed into place on the original hull and the planking going into place. It was a bit unnerving cutting through the outer layer of original hull (4) and removing about 4' feet of the outer skin over the entire circumference of the boat to allow space for Corecell planks to fair smoothly into the old core. Once in place the Corecell faired like butter with a 4' fairing board mounted with 36 grit paper. The greatest challenge was applying glass single-handed to the outside of the hull (5) with the boat in the upright position. What ended up working very well was pulling the 50" x 20'+ bands of 34 oz. triaxial up tight around the hull with ratcheting tie-downs. By varying the direction of pull and tension I was able to stretch the dry glass nicely, even to relatively complex curves. I built up three layers of the 34 oz triaxial on the exterior using this technique. Once the resin had fully cured I cut out the original transom (6), faired the interior Corecell surface, and applied two additional layers of 34 oz. over the entire the interior. With the fabrication and installation of the new port and starboard quarterdecks (7) the hull structure returned to its original rock-solid rigidity.