I had a bit of an embarrassing moment yesterday paddling one of our local streams. I put in for a nice workout paddle on a tributary of the Missouri, which has absolutely no current. I was maintaining a pretty decent speed in the Murky water when I felt the first bump, and then a few more and the boat came up out of the water. I was high centered on some sort of retaining wall or dyke just under the surface. After about five minutes of struggling I was able to use my hands to lift the boat up enough to back up off the dyke that I had hit, leaving a few gashes on the bottom.
I’ve kayaked this stream close to a hundred times without issue, but due to the ongoing drought this creek is the lowest I have seen, dropping the depth from about 6 feet to now abut 2-3 feet. The water is so murky that even though the rocks where just a few inches below the surface, they were not visible until I was right on them. With no current there were no ripples or dividing water to know these obstacles where there.
Question #1: Do any of you have any tips on how to judge hidden obstacles in stagnant water?
Question #2: The gash in my boat is about 1/4 inch wide and about half the depth of the hull thickness, does it need repair or should I just consider it cosmetic?
Thanks in advance for you info!
*Below is a pic of the creek in case anyone is interested
@Marshall said:
Judging from your photo you have a perception plastic kayak, correct?
What do you define as a gash? Did you hole the boat or just put a gouge in the hull?
It’s rotomolded plastic. It didn’t pierce completely through, but I’m worried that maybe it has left a weak spot that could pierce if another obstacle is lightly hit. It’s just a chip out of the bottom, but quite a bit deeper chip than my normal scratches and dings. It chipped out about half the thickness of the shell in a 1/4 inch diameter. I tried to take pictures but they don’t show well.
@magooch said:
You might want to do some plastic welding, or start looking around for a new boat.
I considered doing the plastic welding myself, can anyone tell me if there’s anything special about the welding since it’s rotomolded? PVC, PP or ABS rods?
The boat is made of linear polyethylene. You want to use polyethylene welding rods to repair it. If you have not done thermal welding on a polyethylene boat, look around for someone who has. If there is a whitewater paddling club in your area, check with them. Nearly all whitewater kayaks are polyethylene and many of the short, modern whitewater canoes are as well, so whitewater paddlers often have experience welding cracks.
Deadheads (obstacles just below the water surface) are very difficult to detect in murky, stagnant water. If there is some current, they will often create at least some small ripples. Sometimes even in clear water, in some light they will be hard to pick up. Sometimes there will be a clue. If you are paddling along a bluff and you see big chunks of rock that have broken off and are lying along the bank, you can bet there will be some in the river as well. Likewise if you see remnants of a wing dam or some other structure along the banks, look out for debris in the water. If you paddle through an area with big rocks in the water, there will probably be some downstream that got washed down during high water.
If I hit a deadhead that I did not detect, as soon as I am aware of it I will back off. Trying to power over usually is a bad idea.
I have a friend that takes warrantee reject kayaks cut in half, “demilitarized”, and welds them with a butt weld back together. Plastic welding can be strong. Note that if you are careful a heat gun works faster than the plastic welding irons sold for that purpose.
word of caution: the videos make the thermal welding process look like a snap, but getting a good weld requires heating the hull just enough but not too much, and this is where experience pays a big dividend. It is relatively easy to just melt and dribble welding rod material onto the hull without effecting a real weld. It is also not that difficult to overheat your hull.
@pblanc said:
word of caution: the videos make the thermal welding process look like a snap, but getting a good weld requires heating the hull just enough but not too much, and this is where experience pays a big dividend. It is relatively easy to just melt and dribble welding rod material onto the hull without effecting a real weld. It is also not that difficult to overheat your hull.
That bit about experience and keeping close control of the heat sounds very much the same as welding steel. I once knew a guy who grew up doing various repair work on his family’s farm, and he was smart enough to know that the welding he’d done along the way was no substitute for quality work. When someone asked him if he knew how to weld, he replied, “no, but I can make pieces of metal stick together.”
Not sure if it would help in the kind of water you are describing, but polarized sunglasses can be an aid as they remove the glare from sun reflection on the surface. Fly flat fisherman use them to see underwater fish for example that would otherwise be hidden due to surface glare. Sounds like your problem may be more opaque water though in which case I can’t think of anything other than possible installation of a sonar system on your kayak.
