The Kayaking Popularity Explosion

Kayaks are fading out …
SUP is the explosive growth market.



Will eventually come to where you are .

Availability of cheap rec boats
The availability of cheap rec boats started an enormous surge in paddle sport popularity. Dicks Sporting Goods, West Marine, Ocean State Job Lot etc. Who would ever think that these places would be selling $350. recreational kayaks. Many of these people advance to much more expensive boats and also learn good skills too. I think this price availability has turned kayaking into a very common commodity.



People refer to the word “kayaking” now with these beginner boats in the assumption as this is what “kayaking” is.

Popularity
I just came back from Traverse City, MI a meca for Midwest/Michigan outdoor sports. On the roads and in the parking lots two out of every three cars had a rack with some sort of recreation item, in order it was kayak, SUP and then bike. In seven days across northern Michigan I saw only two boats that would not be considered recreational and those two were hanging under a dock on Mackinac Island. I was thining “all of this awesome shoreline and water and these people are just bopping around the bays in these plastic tubs?”



I was severely disapointed in the lack of higher end kayaks rolling along the highways. Lots of factors to consider is that maybe the locals have their gear stored at home and the cars we saw were vacationers brining their plastic pelican kayaks north? While we did see a lot of rec boats, on the other hand there was a lot of money rolling around on car tops in SUP’s. There aren’t many poly SUP’s on the lower end of the price scale, so you’re easily paying $1500+ for a decent SUP. In the retail market, every sporting goods store had 10+ rec boats strapped to the outside of their buildings while we saw no less than five surf shops what carried high end SUP’s and the trendy board gear that goes with the sport.



Just a few observations,

Emanoh

We see some SUP’s for day paddling
but canoes still reign. We have wilderness tripping opportunities nearby that are more canoe than kayak oriented…



Meaning portages are involved. The funny thing is this is the heartland of SUP. Its called poling. And it can be done in a standard canoe. Some polers have started to use SUP paddles for the open lakes… That’s a trend you might not see everywhere.

kayaks everywhere
They are cheap and light. That appeals to newbies.

no. They are simply cheap
Light and strong always is more expensive.

Great thread!
This is one of the most interesting threads I’ve ever seen on PNet, especially Willowleaf’s summary by decade of the outdoor fads.



There’s been an explosion of plastic rec kayaks where I live in central NC (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) with a couple of big lakes to use them on. But there are also lots and lots of people here with high-end sea kayaks including home-built wooden kit boats and strippers. The aea kayakers get to the coast when they can, and to the lake when they can’t. Lots of sharing of skills here with novices.



But, oh, how I wish I could spend a month in Maine every summer!

Ginger in NC

Yes

– Last Updated: Jun-28-13 3:31 PM EST –

The lady who cuts my hair knows I kayak. Yesterday she asked me if I had any advice on kayaking near Beaufort and Shackleford Banks. Her immediate and extended family have gotten into the fishing kayak thing but apparently they like to tour around in them as much as fish out of them.

Splashing yes, Paddling no

– Last Updated: Jun-28-13 9:28 AM EST –

In Michigan I see many ""floatin' tubs"" but few that
have any knowledge of paddling, stroke mechanics, etc.
Just because someone buys a kayak for $200 doesn't
automatically mean they know a drip about kayaking.

People seem to want cheap splash fun, and have little
interest in the fact that kayaks "transport" people
to and from a destination (often with cargo) .
A simple 5 mile or 10 mile afternoon paddle
is an ordeal many rec paddlers have trouble with.

From what I've seen, they want to float,
more than they want to actually paddle.
A $200 kayak is one teeny tiny step up
from a brand new tractor tire inner tube.

http://www.gemplers.com/product/168041/184-208R-42-Inner-Tube-TR218A-Valve-Type

http://www.kenjones.com/Scripts/XListSearch.aspx?XGID=TUBE_REARTRAC_320%2f90R54

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More like a "Plague"
Bah!



FE

geezer paddlers may be one factor

– Last Updated: Jun-28-13 12:17 PM EST –

Another notable phenomenon relating to the popularity of both canoes and kayaks is the remarkable number of folks over 55 who are avid paddlers. This was underscored about a year or so ago right on this forum when somebody took a survey of regular posters' ages (though I'm sure it was skewed by the fact that us old farts may be more voluble than our younger cohorts.)

I first noticed this trend when I moved back to Western PA 10 years ago after living in the Great Lakes for 8 years (during which absence I had gotten into kayak touring). As I re-established contact with my old outdoor play buddies from the outing club I had belonged to since 1972, I was surprised at first to find that so many of them, who had previously had widely diverse passions (rock climbing, windsurfing, spelunking, mountain biking, backpacking, whitewater paddling, ice climbing, etc.), seemed to have switched to kayak touring as their primary or only sport.

Then I ran into my old friend Bruce, who had been the super jock-of-all-trades in everything from dirt bike racing to extreme rock climbing. After first being shocked to hear that both he and his wife (another super athlete and top notch climber) pretty much only did dragon boating and kayak touring any more, I had a sudden epiphany and began to laugh. "Bruce" I said " you know what this is -- sea kayaking is the last adventure sport we decrepit geezers can still do that looks way cool but doesn't beat us up too much." He thought a moment, then laughed and agreed completely.

It would not surprise me that a component in the surge of higher end performance sea kayaks and canoes comes from us empty nest Boomers who now have the money and spare time to pursue paddle sports with gusto.

So, are the touring kayak and the high end canoe becoming the "Hover-round" carts of the waterways?

Why? Price and the double blade.
With the exception of a few states that border Canada, such as Minnesota, northern New York and Maine, there is no doubt that kayaks strongly outsell canoes. That has been going on, increasingly, for 30 years.



Anyone who was in a paddling store 30 years ago would have seen an inventory of hulls about 15:1 of canoes to kayaks. Go in the same store today and it will be 20:1 in favor of kayaks.



SOTs rule in many of the warm waters of the AmSouth, and rec kayaks are everywhere. Touring kayaks are being displaced almost as much as canoes by recs and SOTs.



To me, the reasons are simple: the price of cheap plastic kayaks and the mind numbing simplicity of the double blade.



A newbie who uses a double blade can go reasonably straight with five minutes of practice. That same newbie will go in frustrating circles with a single blade, and likely has no interest in six months or more of instruction and practice to become competent in the single blade art.



I see more and more SUPs in the stores than five years ago, but frankly I never see them on the lakes and rivers I paddle on. Maybe more of them are on the ocean. (I never saw many windsurfing boards during that phase either.)

Is the technique that simple - uh no

– Last Updated: Jun-28-13 7:49 PM EST –

"""the mind numbing simplicity of the double blade""
- Then why do so many screw it up and never learn it properly?

Kerchunk, kerchunk, kerchunk
Going straight with a double blade is so simple that a five year old or an 85 year old can do it in five minutes.



Weak old ladies in Pungos pass by my impotent single stick all over America these days, with disdain and a contemptuous boat wake. Of course they can’t edge their boat or do 35 Inuit rolls, but who cares about those irrelevancies in the great plastic REC-SOT revolution.



A plague on the plague, I say. Impotently.

Lots of factors…
Having read everything above, I agree with most of it, but there are other reasons as well. In the Ozarks where I live, kayaks have nearly replaced canoes as the craft of choice for people wanting to buy their own, and the liveries are steadily renting more and more kayaks and fewer and fewer canoes. Part of it is the “fad” factor. Kayaks have been the fad for a decade or more now. Part of it, a big part, is that kayaks are solo craft, while rental canoes are always tandem craft. People have found that they really like to be in a boat by themselves in a group of other people in boats by themselves. Part of it is the ease at which you can paddle one downstream with the double blade, without any kind of esoteric techniques. Part of it is that solo rec kayaks are less difficult for the river dorks to keep upright on Ozark streams.



At the same time, anglers suddenly “discovered” kayaks, and kayaks became extremely popular with anglers. The reasons for this is that most anglers’ only experience in canoes was in tandem canoes, and the solo kayak was so much better for the independent angler than a tandem canoe that required a partner and always seemed “tippy”. I still argue on fishing boards all the time with people who say, “I’ve paddled canoes before, but I wouldn’t have anything but a kayak.” When I ask them which canoes they have paddled, it’s almost always a tandem canoe. Well, duh…of course you’ll find a kayak to be a superior solo fishing craft when all you’ve paddled are tandem canoes!



Sometimes you can trace the suddenly increased popularity of something to one particular thing. Especially a popular movie. Whitewater canoeing got a significant boost in popularity from the movie “Deliverance”. Fly fishing exploded after “A River Runs Through It” came out. I wonder if there was something like that which boosted the popularity of kayaks.

Explosion is over
Around here (RI) I’d say it peaked five years ago, and is on the downslide now. Five years ago we would get 50 people in rec boats to sign up for a flatwater training class, and do it 2 or 3 times in the summer. This year not a single person signed up for the class. Still plenty of boats out on the water, but it’s not growing like it was.

Canoeing is more difficult to
learn the basics about. Then the learning curve flattens and you can make progress quite quickly.



The shape of the curve is less steep for beginning kayakers but it takes a lot of water time and work to learn to double blade really well.

Isn’t that true of every hobby?

– Last Updated: Jun-30-13 9:33 PM EST –

Can you name a single activity that's done for recreation for which it is not true that a few people learn to do it very well, but the majority only dabble? Paddling is like that. What's fortunate for the dabblers in every hobby is that their low level of exposure to overly sensitive experts means that they seldom hear this vile drivel directed at them (granted, it wasn't as vile this time as it has been in many of your previous posts. I'm just going with your overall average).

Most don’t care about efficiency.
Most aren’t paddling in situations where it matters that much.

when and where you go

– Last Updated: Jun-30-13 3:28 PM EST –

makes a huge difference. I paddled the upper New in wv yesterday, Saturday at 11:00 am. The peak time to be out. Commercial outfitters were putting on "fleets" of duckies and a few rafts as well. "Private" boaters in open canoes, kayaks, sots, duckies, and even a couple of rec kayaks on an overnight trip. I doubt many folks on this message board can say that duckies are the boat they most frequently encounter? So the "popular" boat changes with the environment and the user's experience level. Do that same trip during the week, and the boats are more sophisticated- ww play boats almost exclusively. Do it in Jan. and I'm pretty much guaranteed that the most popular boat is whatever I and my buds choose to paddle that day since we rarely encounter anyone else that time of year. The harsher the environment, the more specific and sophisticated the boat design.

In my environment SUPs are pretty much limited to park and play. While they may excel at surfing it takes a ton of skill to paddle them successfully down whitewater and requires a high level of fitness. In other words, be prepared to swim a lot.
Belly yaks and river boards have a limited appeal as well since their fitness demands are high even though they are designed for a ww environment.

A new trend is emerging where I live. People are using cheap (made with vinyl bladders) small catarafts, or minis, designed for float fishing on class II and III whitewater. That's becoming popular here on the upper new and greenbrier rivers in wv. Probably a local niche thing even though the boats weren't originally designed or marketed for whitewater. I look for the manufacturers to figure this out and make more durable versions designed specifically for whitewater that aren't cost prohibitive.