CNC Kayaks – Home of the Shrike and Vember Kayaks
Christopher and Nick Crowhurst, CNC Kayaks, supply free plans to build sea kayaks. The kayak designs are derived from the kayaks of West Greenland, and, in particular, the Disko Bay kayak preserved in the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa. We aim to design beautiful and lightweight wooden sea kayaks for construction by those with limited tools, time, facilities and experience of woodworking. The designs are adaptable to your requirements for hull size and cockpit dimensions.
We offer free full-size plans for our two distinct families of sea kayak design, from specialist rolling craft to expedition kayaks. The Shrike family is stitch-and- glue, and the Vember family is wood-strip. To learn more and download the comprehensive Build Manuals and plans, click on the images below.
In the first ten years of this project over 13,000 copies have been downloaded, and over 500 kayaks have been constucted in 54 countries, which means approximately one Shrike or Vember kayak launched per week somewhere in the world. Join the ever growing family of kayak builder and paddlers by downloading the plans today,
– I love this boat.
– the expedition version of Vember.
In the Press
Since we launched the project in 2014, several articles have been published. The following links are to articles that may be of interest to you:
- An article about the origins of the project, published in Ocean Paddler magazine issue 41
- An article about the Vember in the Irish Sea Kayaking Association Magazine:
- An article by Paul Krysik who built an early Shrike, published in the Portsmouth canoe club magazine
- Another article by Paul Krysik on paddling his Shrike
- An article about the Shrike in the Irish Sea Kayaking Association Magazine
- A blog post from the weehbsite of enjoy-crete.com