The Shrike III
(informal name)
The Shrike III is an ultralight dismantlable kayak, based on the venerable Shrike project from www.cnckayaks.com. It was built to fulfill the requirements of having a fitness and rolling machine with the following characteristics: to be decently fast and simple, to be light, to be different from a K1 style kayak, to have some storage room for a day trip and to be easy to store. Given our experience with the Shrike and the fact that the model fulfills all the above, it was easy to choose.
The plywood is 3mm poplar, due to its whiteish appearance and the close to SOF looks it generates once epoxied and varnished. Apart from being split in 3 parts, the hull suffered some other modifications, as the project is highly versatile and was designed from the start to be easy to change. As such, the kayak was shortened to only 5m in length, the beam was reduced by 3cm and the rear part of the hull was altered into a traditional Inuit skeg, by adding the typical concavity. We selected the ocean cockpit, which was also altered. The coaming was built using laminated layers of ply, instead of the typical Shrike upstand, which doesn’t cope well with the tight bend of an ocean cockpit anyway.
The weight of the boat was treated seriously and we shaved off as much of it as possible, without compromising the integrity of the yak. Glass tape was not used at all and everything was built using only 3mm ply. A minimum of epoxy resin was also used.
The kayak came out at only 13.2kg.
The build is adequately solid, but definitely not for heavy use and abuse.
Splitting the kayak is easy, as everything is held in place by 12 screws and their nuts (6 per each section) sank in recessed places in the hull. There are no inside bolts or gaskets used, assuring complete water proofness and simplicity.
The splitting method is thoroughly described in a small manual of its own which can be found here and also included in the download package at www.cnckayaks.com as as v.3.0, "Shrike Build Options - multi-part".