Kayak Repair

What do you do with a punctured kayak? Torch it!

On a recent trip down the Harpeth River near Nashville (story to come), my friends' Twin Otter suffered a major impaling. We think it happened at take out. The hull was punctured at about waterline level near the bow. It was a pretty good cut about an inch and a half long.

We looked into solutions like epoxy, but read that most patches to polyethylene aren't permanent, and they look pretty terrible. So then we got the bright idea to let the boat, in effect, heal itself with the help of a little heat.

"We need a torch of some kind," I murmured. That's when my wife pulled out a chef's torch from a kitchen cabinet, the kind you use to crisp up the top of your creme brulee. "Like this?"

It was perfect. It made a very small, focused flame, easy to control. I got inside the boat with my head up in the bow and heated the area just enough to make the plastic soft but not liquid (this is probably a good place for a "don't try this at home" disclaimer), and then I quickly used a small spackling blade to push the boat's own material over the cut. Next, my friend did the same on the outside. The bottom edge of the wound was pushed in slightly, so the top edge stuck out a bit. He heated both edges and then drug the top edge down over the bottom edge, closing the gash.

The scar is permanent, of course, but so is the repair. And making a bum boat useful again is pretty beautiful to us.