Modifying a Squashtail
New Dragon Paddler, Olivier Languedoc, is a large boy. Rather large. Like 6'2", 220lbs. Now some of this is Poutine, which accounts for 20lbs of that, but the rest is pure big boy. But One of the reasons Olivier joined the Dragons is he wants to get on board the new direction freestyle is going, rather than play catchup in a few years. So, that means he needs a Squashtail - designed for my 150lbs, 5'9" skinny ass.

Olivier actualyl fits quite well in the stock Squashtail, but his is not stock. It has the new Testarossa seat - an interesting mix of the seat I had in my slalom boat at the 1992 Olympics and the current M seat. While this gives you a lot of leverage and control of the kayak, and fis like a glove, it ended up being too tight for him. So... it was time to modofy the boat, and push up the deck.
First you remove the bow wall. Them taking a piece of 3/8" plywood, cut a basic shape of the bow hull. This will slide under the seat between the seat and the hull. its purpose is to make sure that in pushing the deck up, the hull does not deform or round out. You want to keep it flat.
To protect the ratchet buckle, and displace the load evenly, small blocks of foam were placed onto the seat. While these compress, it just keeps loads nice and even - no specific pressure points.
A 1" thick, 8" wide board is placed accross the seat, centred. This, combined with the plywood under the seat, and the actual seats shape, will make sure the hull doesn't deform, and provides the necessary stability for the jack.
The car jack is placed sideways in the boat, well centered.
Bits of foam, about 8" x 1" x 3" are placed under the deck right where his thighs go. This is to stop any pressure point deforming the deck. Since the foam can crush and contour the deck, it keeps any upward pressure even and well disperced, with no edges to cut into the plastic.
We used 2 pieces of 5/8" particle board for the upward pressure boards. These are placed on the jack and centered side to side, forward and back, with the foam under the deck. make sure these are really straight or you're boat will be aysemetric ;-(
Now you start to jack up the deck. We puched the deck about an inch, and then took a pain stripper heat gun, and heated the entire deck area from mid sidewall up to the cockpit, and front to back from mid bow deck to the seat posts. We heated so the plastic was "hot to the touch" but without melting the plastic. Then we pushed it another inch, did it again, and then another 1/2" and let it cool. We pushed the deck 2 1/2", expecting half of that to "come back out". Then we let the boat sit for a week, jacked up. What this does is actually force the plastic molecules to "creep" into this new shape. You know that permenent concave dent you get under the seat of kayak kayak? Thats Creep - it comes from either tying the boat on the rack too tight (sun or not) or from getting into your kayak on the bank (constant rock pressure under your ass eventually stretches the plastic). While Dragorossi kayaks are pretty impervious to this (because of the plastic AND the seat support susytem), ALL materials from plastic to titanium have creep. So for once we used this to our advantage, and let the plastic "stretch" into its new shape.
Here you can see the Liploc system for sprayskirt seal. Obviously we don't want this to collapse, so we cut some small pieces of wood, rounded off so no pressure points anywhere, and placed these into the "sprayskirt" slot.
Here is a better view of the boards and foam being compressed under the cocpit rim. See how the foam compresses and absorbs the load.
A better view of the jack system with boards top and bottom.
The boat fully jacked up. You can see the slight deformation of the deck around the knee area. Unfortunately there is really nothing you can do about this. Try to keep it as symmetrical as possible, and the deformation as "smooth" as possible (thus the foam on the underside). You can also see here the shape of the Testarossa Seat.
And now the test... after a week of letting it sit, we pull out all the parts, and Olivier got in. Boy, what a differance it made to the fit.
We then adde foam to the bow wall. 2" more on the end closest to the cockpit, tapered down to 1/2" near the feet. This we glued onto the bottom of the wall, and pushed in within a few minutes of taking the Jack out to make sure it keeps its new shape.

And thats it.

Now, I want to be clear about something. Dragorossi is in no way suggesting that you modify your kayak, or take a heat gun to it. You can burn the plastic, making it brittle, or melt the kayak. You WILL deform the boat - to what degree depends on your experience doing this - I've done it a ton over the years. While this is certainly a solution that has beenn proven to work, and many people have done this back in the long slicy boat days, there is still a risk that you melt, burn, or deform your kayak, and Dragorossi will not be responsible for that. If However, you really want to do this to your kayak, well, what I have shown you here is the best way to do it to "help" minimise any damage. But accedents happen. remember, Olivier is a pro paddler... he gets his boats for free. if we'd damaged it, we'd just get him another one.