A friend has a wooden kayak that he built from a kit.  It is simple in both design and construction – a stitch and glue plywood boat covered with fiberglass cloth.  It paddles well, is light weight and is very pretty.  Very difficult to ask for more than that, particularly from a kayak.   He built it from a Chesapeake Light Craft kit quite a few years ago.   It still looks great.   As reported by Classic Boat magazine, Chesapeake Light Craft has just achieved a significant milestone.  It has sold its 20,000 kit.   In addition to the kayaks that they are known for, Chesapeake Light Craft also offers kits for row boats, sailboats, and canoes.

US kit builder celebrates 20,000th kit

Chesapeake Light Craft, the Maryland-based designers and suppliers of ply and wooden kits for home-builders, celebrated the sale of its 20,000th kit last week.

In CB268, we covered the story of CLC, a company founded in 1991 which has gone on to provide kits for small, lightweight canoes, sailing and rowing dinghies, to be used on the 30,000 lakes and countless rivers of the USA – and around the world. “If the boats were laid end to end,” says boss John Harris, “they’d stretch for 57 miles.”

CLC is one firm that seems to have been bucking the downturn in recent years, firstly because the kits are so affordable (a 15ft sailing dinghy can be had for under £1,000 complete with sail rig) and also because the light weight of the kits (they typically weigh in at under 100lbs/45kgs) means that they can be cheaply transported around the world. In Britain, CLC kits are stocked by Fyne Boat Kits.

Thanks to Tom Russell at the Traditional Sail Professionals Linked-In group for pointing out the article.