Valley Nordkapp HM

It’s been awhile since something great came across the selling boards, but I look every day and late yesterday a blurred image caught my eye. I am grateful the seller posted some spotty images of this boat, otherwise the keen eye may have snapped this one up before I had a chance, but I got to it pretty early. When I arrived at the sellers home, he told my he had picked this up at a very large waterfront home in Jupiter that he was involved in an estate buy. It was in serious need of some TLC and I originally thought someone had hand painted it black, but realized it was the original custom color (unusual for the 1980’s). The boat looked to be very workable, with only some minor glass repair work on the keel and a lot of man-hours power washing and compounding the surface back to life. It will need all new deck rigging, hatch covers, and a seat-back, which fortunately I have in my stockpile for this era craft. If this turns out the way I think it will, then this beauty gets added to my personal quiver, an awesome compliment to my modern Rebel Ilaga and vintage P&H Baidarka Explorer.

PROVENANCE:

There was a Valley label inside the hull, but unfortunately, the model and serial number was unreadable, even under magnification and special lighting. So I started looking around in my kayaking groups and came across a great website (UK Sea Kayaking Guidebook) which led me to a preliminary assessment of this model Valley Nordkapp HM (Hatches/Modified Hull) was a mid to late ’80 build. Then I noticed the S/N stamped onto the rear starboard hull along the water line. Serial numbers of this era are usually parsed in four parts. The first three alpha characters indicate the company it was registered under. I just assumed that LMW was the call letters for Valley. Reading the last four digits (G989) tells me this was made in July (G) in the year (9) which would have been 1989, and the last two digits indicating the first model year of the hull (89) which would then tell me this hull was made in the first year of its model year of 1989.

An email sent to Valley Sea Kayaks verified it was made in July of 1989, but the model year, not confirmed. They were confused by that. So I went back and looked up the first three alpha characters and was surprised to find out LMW was registered under Southern Exposure Sea Kayaking (importer of kayaks and canoes) that was in business from 1989 to 2003. The cool thing was LMW was run out of Tequesta Fl–– the town immediately south of me (Hobe Sound, FL). I am in the process of trying to track down the original owner, hoping he lives in the area to find out more about this craft’s provenance.

THE PROCESS:

The first day I needed to strip all the old rigging off, then clean out the several pounds of sand, leaves and pine cones from inside the cockpit and open hatches. Then I power-washed as much of the grime as I could from the outside and inside. It took a few sessions of power-washing to get it clean. The second day, I started on the hull bottom, by hand, with 320 wet sandpaper to remove years of iron staining from what appeared to be from a well irrigation system and the kayak being in line with a sprinkler head. I then took a buffer, using Mequiar’s Ultra-Cut Compound. This process is time consuming and took over four hours on just the bottom.

The next day, I went over the entire boat by hand, again, with with 600 followed by 1500 wet sanding.

The third day I used some more buffing and compound, followed by a polishing compound using 3M Light compound and wax. It came out pretty gorgeous as you can see from the images below.

Now the fun part begins: Adding the new seatback, which this boat was never equiped with, telling me the original owner must have been a traditionalist, using all core muscles for paddling. I added new hatch covers (they are attached from below and anchored underneath to the deck), the new bungee cording, perimeter roping and new handles.

It was so worth it when I got it out on the water. This one is a keeper.