During 2004 we have been building our Project Kayak, which will help us to share any problems that we may come across during the build and whilst fishing. We'll discuss the best ways to position and fit the rod holders, and other topics like fishfinders, compasses, GPS, leashes, seats, bait and tackle boxes, along with safety gear.

So if you see our Project Kayak on the beach, please come along and have a chat.

• Getting Started
• Fitting a 6" Hatch
• Making a Kayak Trolley
• Installing a Fishfinder
• Installing a Flush Rod Holder
• Installing a Dash Mount Compass
• Camera Mount
• Making a Paddle Keeper
• Fixtures and Fittings List

Getting Started

To make things easier during the project build, my first task was to make a folding kayak stand. This involved 4 x 3m lengths 42mm uPVC pipe, 8 x 90° elbow joints, straps and 2 x No 8 100mm bolts, nuts, washers and plastic pipe adhesive.

The height of my stand is 1 metre and the length 1.5 metres. Length and height should be adjusted to give you the optimum working height and length of top and bottom tubes to fit your kayak. The straps are looped around the top tubes and adjusted allowing the kayak to sit on the top tubes. Once all the final adjustments are made, glue the elbow joints to give a solid construction.

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Fitting a 6" Hatch

The 6" Hatch is pretty important, it not only gives you a place to store smaller items such as your car keys and wallet, but also gives you access to the inside of your kayak immediately in front of your seated position, perfect for positioning and fixing your fishfinders transducer, which is something we will be coming to later on in this project.

To get started unscrew the cover and remove the bag insert, centre the upside down cover in the deck recess, measure this all twice just in case, when your happy, draw around the cover with a fine permanent marker. I stopped the cover sliding about by sticking a folded piece of masking tape between the cover and deck.

With the drill set on a slow speed, drill a hole slightly bigger than your jigsaw blade a couple of millimetres inside your circle. Now carefully cut out your circle, keeping close to the inside of your drawn line, don't throw away the centre piece it will be handy for testing your adhesives and sealants on before using them on your kayak. Try the hatch outer for fit, it needs to be snug, use a rasp to remove any access material from the hole. When happy with the fit clean up the edges with glasspaper.



Put the hatch back together and screw down lid make sure that it still fits the hole. Now we start fixing to the deck. Remove the backing from the gasket if fitted and refit the hatch in position. Using the correct size drill bit, 5mm on my Ocean Kayak hatch, drill you first hole, push in the first screw, if you are using sealant instead of the gasket, screw on the nut and lightly tighten, now drill the opposite hole and push in the screw, drill and fix opposites until finished, then fully tighten all the nuts again doing opposites. I added a little sealant to each of my holes before inserting the screws, messy job but I don't want any leaks. Refit the bag and firmly screw down the cover.