Mill Creek 13

A couple of years ago I had two back surgeries, I was heavy to begin with, but I gained more weight recovering from the surgery and outgrew my other kayak. All last winter, I built the Mill Creek 13 and believe or not I lost 40 pounds. First and foremost the Mill Creek is extremely comfortable. My first time in the kayak, I just could not believe how comfortable it was. I fit in it! I kayaked all summer and into the fall in my Mill Creek. I am not a very good kayaker, I just do it all the time. I even did the infamous "Grinder" a 19 mile kayak around Grindstone Island on the St. Lawrence River.

It has excellent primary stability and better secondary stability than one might think for a boat with a 29-1/2" beam. Though, TBH, I really have no idea if the beam of a boat has anything to do with secondary stability. It's quick, turns well and holds its own in the speed department. I beat the hell out of it this year, my camp is on rocks, and it held up great. Thank you so much for making a kayak that a large person can enjoy.

I am dropping you a note to say thanks designing the Mill Creek 13. We are very happy with the versatility of this boat as Montana has so many different waters to choose from. In these boats we enjoy fishing, camping and watching our eleven-year-old son handle the Mill Creek like it was made for him.

After I finished building my Mill Creek 13, I went to the DNR to have it inspected prior to registration. The ranger who inspected it gave me a very kind compliment: saying it was one of the nicest homebuilt boats he had ever seen.  This was totally unexpected and a testament to the quality of the kits and instructions CLC provides. 

I have enjoyed the build and am now awaiting spring so that I can paddle my Mill Creek more as the weather will be turning cold here soon enough.  Again thank you for a wonderful experience with the build and hopefully many nice days to come paddling on the local lakes.

I bought a Mill Creek 13 several years ago and put my own wood-strip deck on it. This is the third year I’ve taken it on the rocky rivers in Colorado and Utah, and is also the first year I sustained any appreciable damage to it, enough to require repair. Mostly just scrapes from sliding over big rocks, but this year I got pushed sideways into a big rock putting a silver dollar sized break in the lower panel in front of the hanging knee on the starboard side.

 I’ve been taking it on 3-day/2-night trips and I have to say I love it. It fits all my gear, including a hard-sided Igloo Island Breeze cooler inside the aft compartment and two Coleman half-gallon water jugs in the forward compartment bungeed to the bulkhead and two more on the other side of the bulkhead, right in front of my feet. Tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, food, stove, etc. . . . it all fits.  I even put a second small soft-sided cooler behind my seat so I can have access to drinks without getting out of the boat. Last weekend, I paddled on the White River in Utah, somewhere between the Bonanza put-in and Enron take-out.

I also built a Sea Island Sport in parallel with the building of the Mill Creek 13. My three sons and I took it along with two canoes to the Upper Missouri River Breaks area in Montana. My sons love this boat! It paddles fast, and is super stable, and holds a bunch of gear. It was a great choice for paddling a river like the Missouri and is a blast going through the wave trains.

We bought two Mill Creek 13 kits in March of 2005, and they remained only 20% complete until we moved them to our retirement home, on Lake Monticello in central Virginia, in June of 2016. My wife built hers (Mengib 2) without any prior woodworking experience--teaching her how to drive a nail straight so she could attach the deck and build her slat seat was a hoot.

She commented frequently that she had to learn an entirely new language ("You want me to 'plane the shear clamps'? What the heck does that mean?!! And what's a rolling bevel?" And as these kits were bought in 2005, there were no puzzle-piece joints, only scarf joints...you can imagine the discussion around THAT term!)

As an Elementary School Principal for a school in Fairfax County, Virginia with a highly diverse population including many Limited English Proficient (LEP) students, she used her kayak building (we took many pictures of her work-in-progress) as a story prompt for all the students which gave the children for whom English was their first language (as well as her teaching staff) an idea of what it was like to do something for which she had no language and no experience. A truly powerful teaching tool.

We finished both Mill Creeks launched them in mid-July 2017.

I would like to thank everyone at CLC for conceiving, designing and producing plans for such an elegant and pleasurable craft as the Mill Creek 13.  I really enjoyed the building phase, the looking phase and now the paddling phase.