We may earn commissions if you shop through the links below. If you have been a long time reader of the website, you know that I’m officially out of the kayaking business. After years in the canoe and kayak retail business, years of guiding and then years of owning a kayak guiding business, I got out of it — it is now a hobby of mine. As a hobby and as a business one of my main goals and beliefs is that we are in this sport together and if we work together as partners we can make the sport better. Like everything on the Internet and maybe in the world, discussion is devolving to the point that partnership is no longer seen as something to strive for. On the Internet, especially, it has become all about gaining a leg up, scoring points for a good insult or claiming a win on some silly argument. It doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to work together to make something better anymore. PaddlingLight has always been the hobby side of my passion for paddling. I make a little money on it, but based on the amount of work I’ve done on the website what I make doesn’t come near to paying for my time. The kayak plan project in which I digitized historic traditional kayaks and give away the plans for free is what consumes most of my time. I get asked a ton of questions and hardly anyone buys the upgraded plans — heck, if I give away the drawings for free and it’s only slightly more inconvenient but also fun to covert the plans into a set you could build from why would you pay for the upgrade. I probably wouldn’t for a hobby, because I think doing that stuff is fun. But now and then people do buy the upgraded drawings and it does save time and frustration. In the past, I’ve wondered aloud on PaddlingLight if I should remove the plans altogether because the money I make on them doesn’t pay for the time — sometimes hours a week. I got lots of feedback about keeping them online and decided to keep them online for now. That is until it becomes overwhelming difficult for me to continue to offer it. And experiences like the one I’m about to describe make it more of a hassle than it is worth. Join REI and Earn $30 towards your next gear purchase. My actual profession is as a professional landscape photographer and photography workshop instructor. I sell lots of prints and lead workshops all over the United States. My workshops take place on the weekends and during the workshops, it’s common for me to put in 15 to 16 hour days organizing, preparing classroom space and leading instructional outdoor sessions. I’m lucky I get to do what I do and I love it. Weekends are also the times when backyard boat builders like to build boats. If I get a questions from a builder via email while I’m running a workshop, I like to give the best answer I can by typing out a reply on my phone during a break in the day. Because PaddlingLight is a hobby, it isn’t something I have to do. I don’t provide support on the drawings. They are what they are and you are on your own when you use them. But, I like to provide feedback and answer questions, because it’s fun. And it helps support the DIY community of canoe and kayak builders. When I was building canoes and kayaks I got so much help that I like to pay it back. I have paid it back and then some. So, this last weekend I’m in the middle of running a workshop and have put in an 11-hour day on Friday and am in the middle of at 15 hour day on Saturday to be followed by another one on Sunday. I get an email from a guy who actually bought upgraded drawings for $30. This guy has had problems in the past with the downloads, so I figure I’d answer him right away instead of waiting for Wednesday of next week which is really the next day that I’ll have anytime to do anything for him. This interaction went like this with each bullet point a separate email. He ordered plans. He failed to download them in the amount of time specified on the website and in the download policy. Emails me that he can’t download them. I extended the period that he was allowed to download and increased the number of allowed downloads. He still had problems downloading them, because I pushed the wrong button when reauthorizing his downloads. Most of the time, people download the drawings right after they purchase them. So, I end up having to do this maybe three times a year. My bad for not remembering exactly how to do it. He emails me telling me it didn’t work. He emails me telling me he got an email from me and that the link in the email didn’t work. I fixed the problem and send him a link to the drawings. He emails me back saying it works and for some unknown reason says he supports Trump. I email back that I’m glad it worked and “You wish more for Trump than I do. I wish he’d drop off the end of the flat world that he imagines that he lives on.” This is the first email that I receive on Saturday. He wrote it at 6:48am. He found a problem. Morning Bryan Sorry, but thought I’d better get back to you with a “wee bit” of constructive criticism re your Kayak drawings. You have a discrepancy in your “Lines Drawing” that does not reflect the stated Station positions.(Namely that Station 1 is 2 ft from stern and station 2 is 4Ft 4ins from stern, this means that the distance between 1 &2 must be greater than between the stern and 1. Your Lines drawings clearly show the opposite. There’s a greater distance from stern to 1 than from 1 to 2 ???????????????????????????? Hope this helps At 5:48pm I check my email during dinner and I answer it. I emailed back saying I wasn’t around my computer, so I couldn’t provide an exact answer. I don’t understand what he is writing. I think he is saying that the station distances aren’t even. They aren’t suppose to be, so I email him back stating so. I’m not at my office today to check exact distances, but the listed distance between stations isn’t even on the SOF version of the kayak. It was done that way for Yost-style builds to account for the cockpit placement. If you’re doing a different style of build let me know. About 30 minutes later, he emails back that he is getting frustrated for some unknown reason at this point. Maybe because I didn’t understand what he was saying. He tries to reexplain. I don’t understand what he is saying. In retrospect, I get it, especially after a clearly written response later in the night. He demanded money back which is against my policy on my website. Here’s the email: This is getting very frustrating. Iprint the sheets of plans you send and on one sheet there’s a lines plan with no numbers on it but right next to the lines plan is “Plan Station Locations” with the stated locations measured from the stern. Those stated measurements DO NOT JIVE WITH THE LINES PLAN DRAWINGS – profile and deck. I’m beginning to think I have wasted my money with you?So please return my money soonest. Re Yost, I am not familiar with the term so do not understand what you try to tell me. Kindly refund my money and I shall seek someone else’s kayak plan. Again, I state I don’t understand what he is saying. I tell him the return policy, which is no returns on electronically transmitted drawings. I ask him questions about what problems he is having trying to understand what is going on. Many people have built from these drawings and had no issues. I don’t understand the problem you are having. As stated on website, there are no returns for electronic plans. Can you, please, describe what you are trying to do with these drawings so I can help you figure it out? Are you building a skin-on-frame kayak? Or some other style. I got home after a long day doing my actual job and go back to this email chain. This is a hobby and I’m tired, but I want to figure out whatever it is that he is having a problem with. I reread it and think I understand his issue. I think he can’t figure out where each station goes. I’m not on my work computer, so I don’t have access to my CAD files. So, I download the drawings from my website and I mark them up in a way that addresses what I think he is talking about. I email him at about 7:40pm. He finally states his problem clearly, and I finally understand what he is saying. He found a minor mistake in my drawings. The station locations when measured and scaled on the linesplan didn’t line up with the stated station locations in the chart or on the full-sized stations. Everyone that has built it used the stated locations on the chart and full-sized stations instead of trying to measure and scale the location distance from the linesplan, so the scaling problem was never uncovered before. It stems from the drawings used for the prototype and the final version. After a few prototypes were built, one of the builders emailed me that he thought the stations should be in slightly different locations. I agreed and redrew the stations. Because this is a hobby, it took me several months before I completed the new station drawings. I forgot to change the linesplan to reflect the updated station locations. It was definitely a mistake and one that I’m glad someone found. It was a different problem than what I emailed him about in #11, but the answer was the same as that given in #11. Note: I haven’t emailed him back yet, but this is the first email where I clearly understood what he was trying to tell me. He sends me a picture of the print off of the drawings with no information listed about his problem. He sends me a second picture of the print off of the drawings with no information listed about his problem. It’s actually the same picture as the one he sent in #14. There’s a snide remark as well. He replies in a way that seems like an insult and reexplains what he did in #13. Here’s the the email: GO to your Linesplan and you’ll see , as I explained earlier, more than once, that Station 1 in the Lines plan is not 2ft from the stern but rather more like 2.3ft. Your Lines plan needs to be redrawn to show the proper location of station 1. And possibly others -I have not checked as I quit after finding Station 1 not where it should be on your linesplsan.Rest assured I shall not be recommending fellow builders to seek your plansYou need to correct your Linesplan or your individual stations stated locations. Anyone with proper ship plans drawing training can see your Linesplan does not reflect what your stations say. Maybe you need to take a course in Marine Drafting???????????? I still want to help him (and I’m a little pissed by this point), so although I should be in bed I go into my office and pull up the drawings and the 3D model. I didn’t have time to check to see if the linesplans were actually wrong (I checked this later and they were — see #13 above). I deleted the linesplan. Slapped a regenerated...