The boat hull is built with a hybrid stitch and glue construction, while the upper cab is built in a more traditional manner. The majority of the vessel is marine plywood skinned with fiberglass cloth. Exterior grade ply and glass were used on a few parts of the interior cab. I built the initial hull upside down on my driveway during the summer of 2018, then flipped it and put it in my 2-car garage on a diagonal so it’d fit while started work on the interior over the fall and winter. It was a challenge working in such a tight space, and it drug out the building process considerably.
I pulled it out of the garage in the spring of 2019 and erected a temporary shelter over it in the driveway while I began completion of the rest of the upper structure. By late fall of 2019, I ended up getting a good deal on boat storage for the winter and moved it there along with its trailer. I started back up on construction in the spring of 2020. I was able to have a shop built that spring, so the boat was moved into that and I was able to make slow but steady progress until her launch in July of 2021.
The Cara Lynn is primarily intended for fishing/camping in the lakes, with occasional trips to the West Coast for short cruising/fishing trips. Currently, it’s powered by a 1984 Mercury IL6 “Tower of Power”, but there are plans to upgrade that to a 115 Mercury 4-Stroke next year.