Kara hummer mod question.

[Matthew Townsend]

Hello all....this is my first post but let's get to it. I'm working on my first Kara hummer and like a lot of others I will be squaring the stern to accept a 6.5 55" backwater MM. While looking, I started toying around with flattening the bottom of the boat mid section, aft to perform a little better, into a " semi displacement hull". I figure out by tapering and beveling the chine bow to stern I could get a good bit more flat bottom, and get ply wood to bend to the new curve.

Has anyone attempted this? ( I know I could chose a different boat but let's say I'm sold on this boat)

Is the extra work worth the performance I may gain?

Have I forgotten anything?

 

[Scott Bell]

I would try to keep the rear deck area when you make this modification. The Kara, as designed, doesn't have much freeboard, so adding a motor and person and gas at the rear of the boat then having the dog suddenly run back to say hi can result in precious little room for error. I made that mistake when I started building my version. Luckily a buddy suggest a modification that has probably prevented a swamping or two over the years. My design extended the cockpit back to the rear cross brace and chopped the rear deck off.

View attachment bellboatontrailerside.jpg

That removed some of the flotation on the rear of the boat, which causes the boat to drop at the rear under power (which I'm OK with)

The extra 3" elevation in the back is a nice margin of safety. It also elevates the prop for a standard outboard, making this more usable in shallow water.

With 8 dozen decoys stacked towards the bow, a 3.3 hp motor, me (~200 lbs) and the dog (~45 lbs) and other hunting gear (~25 lbs) towards the rear, I will have a little bit of water up on the decks at the rear of this boat. When turning, the boat will tend to slide (due to the flat bottom), causing the deck on the outside of the turn to dig in to the water. There have been a few times when it's been only an inch or so from coming over the side of the cockpit! I don't go anywhere fast in this boat but I love it for what it was built for (shallow flooded ag fields and marshes)

 

[Mark Spolarich]

I modified mine to square off the stern to accept my 5hp. I carried the width at the cockpit straight back to the transom but I didn't flatten the hull. I also made the motor mount much higher than the transom so the motor would sit high enough.



This should give an idea of how freeboard the boat has..



my boat is just like Scott's when turning under power....the corner will dip pretty good, definitely not a choppy water boat..