By: Al Drucker

While most people know how to outfit their boats or buy the pre-cut stuff, there are many different types of outfitting that can be added to make your boat that much more responsive, or to fit you better, as boats right off the shelf are designed to fit a wide range of people.Outfitting allows you to customize the boat the way YOU want it.Below are some different types of outfitting that can be done to allow the most performance from your boat.

Pleasure pod

This piece of outfitting is essential to stop sliding around on your seat while working a hole or wave. To start you need to sit in your boat, and mark where your crotch is on the seat.

-take two pieces of foam, and cut them 2" wide, and cut them long enough to reach from your mark in a triangular shape that gets larger as it goes towards the bow, cut these two pieces so that they form a right angle at your crotch.

-next, take two more pieces, and build up your shape, your goal is to build up a solid foam block that will lock you in place, the first picture shows mine halfway done, while the second picture shows the finished product. 

Half-way:

Done:

Back rest stiffener:

-If your backrest tends to slip down on you, you can do the following to stiffen in.

-using the part where the seat meets the rear foam pillar, start evening this area out with blocks of foam.

-now have a vertical piece of foam in front of the blocks, and directly on the backrest, this is your pressure piece.

-you can keep forming this rest type structure until your backband is where you want it

Hip Pads:

Yeah they are pretty standard, but a lot of people have trouble forming them.

-Take a block of foam measured to the side of the seat, now place the block on edge, and cut a diagonal cut along the long edge, this should leave you with 2 tapering pieces of foam.

-use a knife, and cut away the entrance part, for example if you are making a hip pad for your right side, you cut a 45 degree angle with the angle facing the stern (look at the picture).

-Using a surform shaver start to form your shape allowing 2 inches to hook over, while the rest is taken away to the desired width, also rounding all of the edges makes this more comfortable.

Hip Lifters:

These are useful to help raise your legs up a little for comfort and control.

-Take some foam about 1 inch thick (the thicker it is, the more support you get), place it so that the bottom of your thighs rests on it, then glue it into place.

-Now use a surform tool, and taper it down so that your rest comfortably on it, and voila!

Seat:

Usually people just take 1/4" foam and trace their seats shape, cut it out and glue it in.However recently due to a lack of foam and money I used a bunch of scrap foam to outfit my seat.

-First I cut out a piece to fit around my pleasure pod, and then I cut out a strip to cover the rear of the seat (lower back).

-Then I cut pieces of foam to plug together to form a seat.I laid it up dry to make sure it would fit, and then put it in with contact cement.

-After it dried, I used the surform shaver to even all of the foam out, I also built the pleasure pod a little higher, and cut away any excess foam.

THE FINAL OUTCOME:

The great thing about outfitting is that you can do it however you like.Start off simple, and after paddling it for a while see if you want to build up anything, or add some outfitting, you can always change it up.Good luck.