The Cataraft Chronicles The following is a chapter from my running journal of the six month effort to redesign the rowing frame on our Kingfisher catarafts. Here you will find an almost daily update of my current sea trials / shakedown / vacation trip to the Gulf Coast to try the new design in several different types of fishing water.

You can find the other chapters here:   Cataraft Chronicles, Table of Contents

I'm back home now but you can always e-mail me at: ray@cataraft.com

 Chapter One, Getting Ready

Tuesday, March 2, 1999

Yesterday the clouds parted momentarily and we actually had a chance to put the 15 foot model in the water. Here are some pictures of this momentous occasion:

Here's the boat on the trailer leaving the shop. We even registered this one.

Here's me (great view) pushing the boat off the trailer. Note the snow on the banks.
 
 
 

Here's Jerry at the helm. The 5 horse motor I had was obviously too small to bring the 15 foot model up on plane as I suspected. However the boat performed really well under power. Turned on a dime and stayed dry except for the little hole in the lower deck near the stern transom where the anchor line runs below the deck then forward. The small amount of water that entered immediately ran out through the stern drain slots.

I also tested the boat with the oars and found the higher stance from the 25 inch diameter hulls was even better for rowing than the 20 inch diameter prototype hulls I tested last fall.

I might actually be outa here by Thursday morning.

Update, February 24, 1999

River King Prices are now available. Just click the link. I'll try to post some package prices by Saturday. FYI the lower deck visible in the picture below is three sections of the BWLD3 item in the price list.

Update, February 21, 1999

I see my foolish prediction of a Feb. 12 completion date in the last update as I write this. I think I should stop predicting and just say that it's getting closer. This has been a snowy winter which delays deliveries from the companies we purchase from and has contributed to the slower than hoped for progress. The good news is that the basic boat is actually complete as of yesterday afternoon. Here's a picture for proof.

From this front view of the new 15 foot long model with the bow transom removed you can see some important details of the new design.

• The frame is 9 foot long. The upper deck beam is 6 foot. The upper deck is made from three, 3 foot sections joined together (invisible inside the 2 inch aluminum side rails). The upper decks are each 16 inches wide. One reason for this wide upper deck area is for a walk around fishing platform, popular with many owners of our older All Around model who fashioned their own upper decks out of plywood.
• The 18 foot boat would use four, 3 foot frame sections, the 12 foot boat, two.
• The lower deck is optional but will probably be used in all configurations except that it sometimes won't be used in the white water configuration when you run rivers that require a high clearance for boulders. There will probably be more than one kind of lower deck available. This one is a marine inshore / bass fishing type deck suitable for my upcoming trip to the Gulf Coast. This lower deck is made from three, 36 inch sections, 34 inches wide. This 34 inch width is a standard width for all lower decks for the RK series which accommodates almost all larger coolers.
• The decks are surfaced with King Starboard XL, a marine grade polymer impervious to salt water and UV that is easy to clean, relatively non-skid, floats and does not absorb water. The color is Dolphin Gray for non glare.
• The inflatable hulls are a full 15 feet long by 24 inches in diameter providing many pounds of high floating buoyancy.
• The upper deck is separated from the hulls by a shaped molded cushion of Coast Guard certified marine grade floatation foam that runs the full length of the deck. This foam provides many pounds of safety flotation independent of the hulls and also provides the perfect buffer between the rigid deck and the flexible inflated hulls.
• Each 3 foot section of upper deck has its own cross brace which stabilizes the assembled frame and allows for very small disassembled storage size. The 9 foot frame pictured here (for the 15 foot hulls) should store in a 3 foot square cartop carrier plus a pvc or fabric tube for the three, 6 foot long cross braces. The complete boat, ready for shipping or travel, would then include the frame box, the tube and the two deflated pontoons in their heavy duty mesh bags which will come with the package..

Here's a view of the outboard motor mount / transom which we also had time to fashion and fit yesterday afternoon.

This view also shows the six foot wide bow deck being fitted. Here a five hp motor with a short shaft is fitted to the transom. I expect that this 15 foot model will accept up to 15 hp but until I test it under actual conditions I won't know for sure. That's why this Gulf Coast trip is so important. (Also, I'm getting really tired of snow and I have a strong need to stand in warm water and look at big fish.)

To do list: Remaining to be done this week is the pole deck to be mounted over the motor, the oarlock stands for river running and preliminary sea trials in Lake Pend O'Reille weather permitting.

Big question: Should I delay the trip another week while I design and build a center console which I think would be a great addition to this inshore theme? Or should I just get outa here and put that off till later?

Route planning: So far I've had three invitations from anglers along my route, Mid Texas, New Orleans and South Florida, to stop and try out my new boat in their home waters. Thanks for the invites. I really appreciate the chance to do that as it's hard to figure out where to fish when you're new to an area and I hope to test this new concept in as many different situations as I can on the trip.

Till next update . . . thanks for checking out our progress, Ray Pelland

Update, February 8, 1999

Final prototype nearing completion.  Designing a new rowing frame is a little like building a house - the basic design doesn't take long but the details can take forever. But these last few weeks have been busy and productive and most important details are now resolved. A fifteen foot version of the new boat is nearing completion and I hope to have it done by this coming Friday, February 12.

As soon as it's done I'll take it out on Lake Pend O'Reille (pronounced pond-o-ray') and take some pictures to publish here. The way the weather is going this year it may be on the ice. Look for them next weekend if you'd like to see the first pictures of the real thing.

While the basic design has remained the same, many tests and decisions have been made regarding the little details like fasteners and materials for the various parts. A major change from the picture above is the suspension of the lower deck. We have gone from hanging the lower deck from four rigid aluminum struts, as in the photo above, to a webbing suspension system. The new approach provides some remarkable benefits.

Each lower deck section is now completely adjustable or removable. The sections are 18 inches long by 34 inches wide. The 6 foot frame modules can include four of these and the 3 foot module two. Each of the 18 inch sections can now be adjusted low as in the photo above, high (straight across) to provide a seat or upper cargo or dog deck, or any height in between.

Alternatively you may leave the lower deck off entirely which will probably be the way most white water enthusiasts will set up the boat.

Possibly the best advantage of using a flexible webbing support system for the lower deck is the way the boat can now be stored and transported.

It will be unnecessary to remove the lower deck. You will just deflate the hulls and take off the cross braces to disassemble the boat. The two upper deck sections, with the deflated hulls still attached, will then fold over on top of the lower deck and you're done. In far less time than it took to disassemble the old frame, you will have a 6 foot long by 34 inch wide by about a foot high package ready to go. This can be strapped directly to roof racks, stored in a travel bag or in the new Kingfisher boat box, ready to attach to your roof racks or throw into your vehicle. I'll include some pictures of this next weekend as I suspect my written description is probably not too clear.

The perfect deck material has been found. The prototypes shown above and below use plywood for deck surfaces. Until a few weeks ago marine grade plywood was the only suitable choice I could find for this deck material. Marine plywood would have been OK but no matter what grade of  plywood we'd use, it would still absorb water and eventually, depending on finish and care, it would get soggy and delaminate.

Since then, I have found a wonderful material called King Starboard XL. This stuff is actually a polyethylene sheet that comes in various thickness. It weighs about 60% of an equal volume of water so it's quite light and provides flotation itself, it does not absorb water, it is impervious to UV and salt water and comes in various colors. We will use the Dolphin Gray to match our new gray skid plate fabric for the River King inflatable hulls.

I'm off for sea trials next week. As soon as this final model is done I'm taking it down to the Gulf coast for two weeks of sea trials. I'll hit the coast in Alabama and work/fish my way down and around the west coast of Florida. I don't know how far I'll get but I want to test the boat with various size outboards and in a variety of water from estuaries to rivers to flats. I may stop for a day or two on my way down to float the Beaverhead near Dillon Montana with my good friends Robbie and Elaine Garrett. I had some very good fishing and a wonderful winter float with these two last year at this time and I'm hoping for a repeat. This will depend on the weather of course as this has been a strange year and who knows what will happen but if it's not a raging snowstorm I expect some trout fishing may be had on my way down to the coast.

I plan to update the web site every couple of days from now on as the boat nears completion and while I'm on the trip. I'll be taking pictures with my digital camera and I'll have my laptop so this can be a "River King Cam" experience. I've never tried anything like this before but I can't see why it won't work. Finding places along the way to plug into the net to update the web site will probably be my biggest problem - but we'll see.

New River King Logo is inspected after silk screening by Kingfisher guy Adam Pucci. The new vermilion ink really stands out from the blue fabric background.

Prices Will Be Posted Next Weekend Until all the final design details are in place we won't know exactly what it will cost to produce the boat. But now with everything finally coming together we've got a pretty good idea of costs and I will post the preliminary price schedule for the new boat and several accessories before I leave. The outlook is that the new boat will be a little more expensive, per foot, than the Day Tripper and All Around, but not much more. The additional cost is primarily due to the addition of the full lower deck which is an option (the old models only had a short standup casting deck).

New 800 number. We've been getting as much as 20 calls a day on our 800 number that were wrong number calls. Our old 800 number I guess was very close to Ameritel's 800 number. So we asked to have it changed. The new number is  800-563-6643 so please update your records.

When you call us you'll probably talk to Carolyn, our office manager, chief sales person and general all around great gal. She's not only smart but as you can see she's a pretty gal too. Here's her picture so you know who your talking to.

So check back next weekend and here we go.

Last Update Below - November 22, 1998

The next picture below is the 15 foot version of the new design being tested on the Missouri R. during the first week of November. This cataraft certainly is too big to be called a PFC. It will be a good boat for guides and folks who usually have a partner along anyway. There are options being designed for motor mounts, poling stands, etc. to give this larger craft the ability to fish many different kinds of water including near shore, coastal waterways. As before, all fittings are marine rated.

It was a great day on the Missouri for BWO's near Cascade, MT, overcast and drizzly. The fishing was so good it was hard to take time to put the boat thru it's paces. But assistant designer Mike DeMarco and I managed to come back with several ideas for ways to fine tune the design.

Changes Ahead    You can see that there is now a full length lower deck in each boat. Also, in both models there is a solid flat upper deck on each side. This greatly increases the carrying capacity of boat. We always had plenty of floatation, there just weren't too many places to put your gear. Even more important it gives you many ways to stow your gear with more room to move around on the boat and get the stuff when you need it. It also allows your cooler to double as the rowing seat (or the support for the rowing seat) which saves even more space on the boat.

Other new features which aren't as apparent in the picture include a dual anchor system and integral straps to attach the hulls to the frame.

Evolution!   If there's one recurring theme in this evolution toward the ideal personal fishing craft (if there is such a thing) its that serious anglers are mostly interested in the fishing oriented performance features of their PFC. Yes, light weight and collapsibility are important and we always strive to keep things as small and lightweight as possible . . it's just that the trade-offs for ourselves and our customers seem to have slowly shifted toward a larger boat with even more floatation and fishing convenience. In a sense this is just another step in the progression that was started with our (revolutionary at the time) stand-up casting deck.

Many of our customers such as Shane Harris, shown here on the Clark Fork this fall, have customized their Kingfisher to enhance this kind of capability. Here Shane stands on the custom plywood upper deck of his All Around model while his friend handles the oars. Notice the extended cooler bracket he built which puts the cooler behind the dog deck. Shane's dad Craig and fishing partner Duane Black have created similar custom features on their All Around's.

 
So the news is that the 1999 line will have larger catarafts for more demanding applications and will come with many new features as standard. Keep posted! We're getting closer. I'll put any new pictures here as they become available.  Ray Pelland

River King Catarafts
Port Ludlow, WA

Telephone: 360.316.1170 
Or, send us E-mail:   info@cataraft.com

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