A problem at the stern…

I’ve just realised that my strips have not been meeting form 16, which I think will cause a problem.

Form 16 is 1′ from the stern, and has a concave section. The strips should pinch inwards and flare vertical to form a gentle skeg. (A skeg is a vertical section at the stern, to help the boat track straight.) But as you can see, my strips are about 1/4″ from the form, so they are prescribing a rounded stern, not a pinched stern:

The stern is too rounded - strips not meeting form 16

(I have exaggerated the red and black lines a little.)

Spot the gap between form 16 and the strips ...

I’m not quite sure what to do about it yet. I did try squeezing it…

The stern strips bend from near vertical to near horizontal, and back to near vertical again, in a very short distance

…which helped, but I think it’s too little too late. I should have done this for each strip. It’s really hard to make the strips behave at this point on the hull, so I bet plenty of Guillemots out there have this rounded stern, not the pinched stern of the design.

Why bother?

There are plenty of posts online about the Guillemot tracking poorly, so I think this is probably a significant mistake on my part.

Will report back with the solution!

The fix

I posted some questions on Nick Schade’s Kayak Forum here and Ross Leidy’s Blue Heron forum here, and the members were really helpful. (Click each link for the respective posts.)

The general consensus was to heat the area either with steam or a heat gun. I don’t have a heat gun, and Sarah’s hairdryer wasn’t powerful enough, so hot water it was.

First job was to soak the area, using a tea towel soaked in hot water.

Next, squeeze the strips. Thanks to Charlie for suggesting the use of blocks, very effective!

Finally, heat the area, since it's winter. That's an upturned hand washing basin sitting on the hull, covered with blankets.

It’s worked, and I’m glad I have used PVA, since this softens in water, allowing the strips to move. (It seems to re-harden too, fingers crossed!)

Ways to avoid this problem

Reading the various forums, this is a pretty common problem. I don’t think cheater strips would have helped. Basically I should have heated the strips when applying them, and used more force to make them align to the forms.

The other thing I should have done was use strips of a lesser width. I’ve used 3/4″ strips so far, but the chine (line where the hull transitions from vertical side to horizontal bottom) would have been a LOT easier with 1/2″ strips.