cute fuzzy bunny
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
So i've been boating a bit lately and decided to get back into some regular kayaking. When I sold my mcmansion I sold my fancy sit-inside and my two person sit-on-top and just kept my old 12' "old town" hardboat thats heavier than a load of bricks but fairly indestructible.
My old paddling grounds were a pair of lakes and a very slow moving river, all fairly limited in debris but with some swampy areas with pokey branches underwater.
The new paddling grounds are a bunch of rivers that converge and split, lots of levied areas that expand drastically in the winter rainy months, and the amount of fixed and floating tree debris is enormous.
I havent hit anything yet, although I often have to meander around a bunch of dead tree limbs. Not so much as a scrape. I've seen a couple of trees approaching me, replete with 2' long branches, at about 5-8MPH as I paddled upriver.
Since getting rid of the Expedition, which could hold the kayak inside and made loading and unloading easy, I've had to strap the Old Town to the roof rack of my Rav4. Between it being a pain in the butt and scratching the roof of the car, I'm not happy with the arrangement.
So I decided to look into some of the inflatables. My only concern is hitting a sharp object and puncturing the boat. One of the rivers thats my favorite to play in is a sierra runoff river thats below 50 degrees and has wide banks and quick moving water. In other words, I dont wanna end up getting rather suddenly dropped into it, even on a 110 degree day.
I've seen some tiers of boat, but nobody sells them in my area so no touchy feely. Reviews run wild on every product from "great" to "sucks" so no coherency there.
I've seen a Coleman 30 gauge PVC boat for $60 that received good reviews from what sounded like rank amateurs. A couple of Sevylor boats in the $130-200 range that are also straight PVC but get good reviews, but a couple of them said "and i've poked a lot of holes in it, but they're easy to fix".
I almost settled on a boat from Advanced Elements called a dragonfly 1, which is also sold by national geographic under their name. About $220 shipped. Polyester fabric sandwiched with PVC.
Everything upstream of that is 350-1200+ and I'm not paying that much. I'd keep hauling the hard boat.
Conditions are low wind, low to moderate current, lots of side current, some boats, some jet skis, frequent sand bars, grainy gravel, trees here and there, nothing too extreme. Have a couple of paved launch areas but prefer some sandy/muddy launch spots.
Any suggestions or recommendations?
My old paddling grounds were a pair of lakes and a very slow moving river, all fairly limited in debris but with some swampy areas with pokey branches underwater.
The new paddling grounds are a bunch of rivers that converge and split, lots of levied areas that expand drastically in the winter rainy months, and the amount of fixed and floating tree debris is enormous.
I havent hit anything yet, although I often have to meander around a bunch of dead tree limbs. Not so much as a scrape. I've seen a couple of trees approaching me, replete with 2' long branches, at about 5-8MPH as I paddled upriver.
Since getting rid of the Expedition, which could hold the kayak inside and made loading and unloading easy, I've had to strap the Old Town to the roof rack of my Rav4. Between it being a pain in the butt and scratching the roof of the car, I'm not happy with the arrangement.
So I decided to look into some of the inflatables. My only concern is hitting a sharp object and puncturing the boat. One of the rivers thats my favorite to play in is a sierra runoff river thats below 50 degrees and has wide banks and quick moving water. In other words, I dont wanna end up getting rather suddenly dropped into it, even on a 110 degree day.
I've seen some tiers of boat, but nobody sells them in my area so no touchy feely. Reviews run wild on every product from "great" to "sucks" so no coherency there.
I've seen a Coleman 30 gauge PVC boat for $60 that received good reviews from what sounded like rank amateurs. A couple of Sevylor boats in the $130-200 range that are also straight PVC but get good reviews, but a couple of them said "and i've poked a lot of holes in it, but they're easy to fix".
I almost settled on a boat from Advanced Elements called a dragonfly 1, which is also sold by national geographic under their name. About $220 shipped. Polyester fabric sandwiched with PVC.
Everything upstream of that is 350-1200+ and I'm not paying that much. I'd keep hauling the hard boat.
Conditions are low wind, low to moderate current, lots of side current, some boats, some jet skis, frequent sand bars, grainy gravel, trees here and there, nothing too extreme. Have a couple of paved launch areas but prefer some sandy/muddy launch spots.
Any suggestions or recommendations?