Good detective work. The deck is more pointed, but it does look similar. At lease it helps place the OP’s project in the 70s?
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We were talking about repairing a fiberglass boat, not restoring it and adding abunch of equipment it has never had before.
Kayaks with no deck lines are dangerous. Look at the picture of the crack closely my opinion is the fiberglass hull to to damaged to fix from exposure.
It looks like a real challenge. Almost anything can be repaired with enough effort and dollars.
If you are new to kayaks, You may want to wait until spring and google demo days for kayaks, and see if you like the activity, and whether that would turn out to be the type boat you would want.
If you like kayaking, picking up a cheap used boat to paddle on nice days while working on this one may be the way to go. Right now, I have three boats, but the serious paddlers have more.
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I have a 4.8m poly i use regularly (can see it in the background of the photos). This was just a side of the road find that i thought would give me something to do over winter (southern hemisphere). Learn some skills with fibreglassing on a free boat so I’m better prepared if / when i get a big glass boat to replace the penguin. May get a working boat out of it, may be too far gone.
We have had rain non stop here this past couple weeks, this afternoon I’m following one of the above suggestions and hitting it with a pressure washer to check for delam, if the pressure washer doesn’t blow it to pieces I’ll move on to splitting it, and uncovering the extent of the damage.
Traditional Skin on frame kayaks don’t have deck lines. There is a special rescue technique used that doesn’t need deck lines, a variation of the “T” rescue, for when a roll fails.
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Newbies usually don’t have SOF hulls.
Skill level wasn’t mentioned. I was tempering a broad statement that kayaks without deck lines are dangerous.
My statement was broad also.