Perception 3D - Pool Roller?

Looking to get a small boat to practice rolling in a friends pool. There is a good deal on a Perception 3D near us, complete with skirt, paddle, etc.



Would this be a good boat for rolling practice? I believe at 5’10" and 180 lbs the boat will fit, just not sure if I should even bother with learning to roll a whitewater boat when my passion is for sea kayaking.


Fine if the price is right
3D is pretty old boat now, so you don’t want to pay more than $300.



Learning to roll a whitewater boat will be just fine for learning to roll a seakayak. It’s the same technique, just a slightly different feel. Also you can learn a lot about bracing and staying upright. If you have a small boat you will be more likely to go out and play in rivers, rock gardens and surf and become a better all around kayaker.



A good video for teaching yourself in a white water boat is Eric Jackson’s Rolling and Bracing video. It will teach you a lot of essential skills and most people are rolling on their own within about a half hour.

Make sure
Make sure you fit in the boat. Some of these types of boats can be very tight on your feet.

If The Pool Isn’t Too Small…

– Last Updated: Oct-22-13 4:48 AM EST –

you could use a sea kayak. I do. Save yourself $.

A sea kayak would be better.
“Old school” kayaks 10’ long or so will feel more like sea kayaks, but as I recall, the 3D is sort of “new school” and introduces elements into the roll that don’t apply to rolling a sea kayak.

Play boat…
Yes, I was wondering if this might be true. The planing hull on this boat must feel quite different than a displacement hull right? Would this lead to bad technique or just confuse things a little?

Cheap and fun…
G2d ponta out below that the play boat may introduce facets to the roll a sea kayak may not be subject to. I am worried about developing bad technique, but agree with you about becoming a better ‘all around’ paddler. I would most definitely try my luck on rivers, etc. in a small boat as I can’t see that doing anything but helping.



As for the price, it’s $150 for the boat, skirt & paddle so if I fit in it I might just go for it.



And I will check out the video you suggest for sure!

That’s why
I use an old Perception Pirouette S in the pool (I used to do ww in it, and kept it). It’s small enough to go thru any door, and it’s super easy to roll. The rolls in that boat easily translate to a sea kayak.



That’s how I learned to handroll - got it in about a half hour in the Pirouette, and a few weeks later I could hand roll a sea kayak.



I agree that the newer ww kayaks are probably not going to translate well to a sea kayak.

From someone who mixes it up…
I have an original era Inazone for which I am probably about 10 pounds too heavy right now, but it serves as a great lazy way to do a pool session. I can throw it into the back of my station wagon and I don’t care if I am rough on it getting it moved in and out to the pool. On very cold winter nights it is hard to make myself wrestle with a full length sea kayak and frozen straps if I have an alternative.



The Inazone is a planing hull, if anything more of a pancake than the Perception 3D based on what I can see in pictures.



Its low volume definitely contributes to making it easier to roll, but the pancake shape makes the initial phase more interesting so the two probably balance each other out.



The big difference I find between this and a sea kayak in the roll is that, once the Inazone is up a certain amount, it’ll flop over the rest of the way without any help from me. In my sea kayaks, the Explorer will do much of the same thing but not at the same time, and the Vela is a boat that requires me finish the roll properly for it to be secure. All three boats start the roll the same way, get your body near the surface then sweep and finish the hip snap or thigh lift or butt push or whatever you want to call it. (I’ve heard all three and, once you understand their meaning, they all lead to the same result.)



I agree that an “old school” boat is a closer match to rolling a sea kayak, but even the ubiquitous RPM’s are getting harder to find because they are… old. I like having a little boat that makes it easier and more likely I will practice, as long as I understand where things might not translate perfectly.

YES!
That was the boat everyone got their first roll in at the classes I attended years back. People nearly fought to get to it first.

Remember that the part that planes
is not in the water as you start your roll, and doesn’t get in the water until you’re close to finishing. Some kayaks are more stable in the upside down position than they are right side up. (I have such a boat, and it is long.)



I have never found the planing/displacement distinction to meaningfully describe the difference between old school and new school boats. ALL kayaks have displacement hulls, and ALL kayaks can plane very nicely on a fast, green wave. Old school kayaks were designed more for straight line speed, and new school kayaks are often designed to plane on fast water.



No kayaker can paddle hard enough to get any kayak to plane. The kayaker must get help from fast water or ocean wave movement to get a hull to lift and plane.



The real distinction between old school and new school is length. New school boats are a lot shorter, trading away some speed to get better maneuvering. Creek boats usually have only minimal provision for planing. Play boats have flat bottoms and sharp chines to make them “loose” so they can stunt in a small area. River runners have flat hulls and sharp chines so they can carve into and out of eddies and do dynamic ferries. River runners are longer for speed.

Piedra is even easier…
if you can fit in it.

Don’t worry about bad technique
If you can roll a modern whitewater boat, you can roll most any seakayak.



There is a small difference in how the roll progresses based on the shape of the hull, once you get the principle down, and have a good hip snap you can easily roll a seakayak. A small boat lets you take it inside your car, throw it around the cement at the pool, leave it outside in cold weather etc etc.



I find it a huge pain at pool sessions with 17 + seakayaks, with people trying to get them into the venue, into the water and then taking up a huge amount of area in the pool. You can seal launch the whitewater boat off of the side, diving boards etc. and develop real skills for balance, rolling and bracing.

mechanics of rolling
are the same for white water and sea kayaks–my experience is that most sea kayaks are a little easier to role than WW boats. And WW boats are a heck of a lot easier to get into a pool due to size

vs
I suspect that a typical WW boat is easier to roll than a typical sea kayak because it is lower volume, and any low volume boat will be easier to roll than a similar length high volume boat, and that applies amongst WW boats also. A WW creekboat with big kneebumps is going to be more difficult to roll than a slim WW boat. Now WW boats with low-volume tails like playboats do feel different, because the tail sinks, and the boat does not feel like it is flat on the water.

WW boat will not hurt your technique
As seadart already said, rolling a sea kayak will feel different from rolling a WW boat. But it’s still the same roll. Assuming the boats fit you properly (this includes outfitting), if you fail in one and succeed in the other, something in your technique is not up to snuff.



I’ve been rolling both a Jackson Side Kick and various sea kayaks for years now. Switching back and forth has never been a problem.



For pool rolls, the WW boat is my go-to boat. It fits completely inside my truck bed, it weighs half what my sea kayak does, it takes up very little room in the pool (a huge consideration unless you go to a full Olympic size pool), and it is easier to get in and out of the pool facility’s doors.



An added bonus is that you can actually paddle the little boat in the pool, unlike with a sea kayak. If you want to practice strokes or turns there, the WW boat’s small size allows that.



Another bonus is that you do not worry about either spearing someone or having your boat damaged from spearing by someone else, in such a low-speed environment.



If you paddle the WW boat outdoors, it will also help you clean up stroke technique, because its inherent turniness is less tolerant of asymmetries in stroke.



If the price is good and the boat fits, I say go for it.

Dive board launch?

– Last Updated: Oct-21-13 12:18 AM EST –

I wonder if they'd allow it...

RE: long boats in pools: Something most people probably don't consider is that being able to fit more WW boats in a pool than you could sea kayaks means that the pool rental fee gets split more ways! Which means either cheaper per-person fees or higher likelihood of getting enough people to commit to paying their share to reserve a pool session.

There is a pool in my town. Supposedly, there are lots of paddlers who roll. But trying to get enough people to commit to paying even $10 per hour to reserve the pool is like herding cats. I suspect that if it was a big WW boating area, I'd have no trouble getting reservations for weekly pool sessions. As it is now, I drive 50 miles each way, once a month, to attend a session elsewhere.

Have to admit, I do miss being able to drop in on a 4-hr pool session held every week, in a full-size Olympic pool, for a mere $9 for as much of that 4 hrs as I wanted.

Thanks to all!
What a great response to my question once again!



Unfortunately I missed out not he 3D but am now pretty set on getting a WW boat to play in the pool and surf with. I have heard the Dancer or RPM are good starting points then I can upgrade later if the discipline suits me.



Will definitely need to get in more WW boats as I have found a couple already that are simply not right for my frame - the Redline was like wearing a plastic body cast for me… And while this might be a good thing when going over waterfalls, I think there is a better fit out there.



Again, thanks to all fort he great advice!

Actually…
Many WW boats are harder to roll than a well-fitting sea kayak because they are so wide and flat. A properly sized sea kayak for a paddler is well fit to their hips and volume and the hull is narrower and rounder. The part around your hips is mostly what matters - it’s not like those long skinny ends aren’t going to come along when you roll.



That said, I have known more than one WW paddler who got into an over-volume sea kayak because they thought that was the nature of the boats, and then of course found it hard to roll. Self-fulfilling prophecy.



My favorite story is one night at a pool session, one of the sons of the coaches was messing around in his WW boat. It was a boat from maybe the worst era of WW boats to roll - a flat pancake with a square box sticking out of the top, that came higher on him than my sea kayak did. He was skinny so he could get thru my XS cockpit (Explorer LV), and he was interested in trying the fit. Then a guy around the edge challenged him to a hand roll in it.



The young man was exhausted, but after seeing him roll that box-on-box I was sure he’d manage my boat, one of the all-time easiest sea kayaks to roll. So I didn’t get in the way.



Suffice to say he nailed it and came up with a complete look of surprise on his face, shared by his primarily WW father. Neither of them could believe that a sea kayak could be that easy to roll, both had bought the old-school line that they had to be harder because they were longer. Unfortunately I still hear this from time to time from WW folks,. It seems they just can’t get their heads past the boat being longer to really look at the fit and paddler match.

Rolling depends on proprioceptive
feedback, which will be different for very different boats. If I saw an experienced ww paddler climbing into a sea kayak for the first time, to go surf some waves, I would tip him over while he is close to shore, so he could find out how it feels to roll, or NOT roll, a sea kayak. I would not expect a roller with only sea kayak, or only ww playboat, experience to step into the other variety of boat and have instant surety with rolling.



Once one has roll experience with both types of boats, going back and forth may be easier than jumping back and forth from road bikes to mountain bikes.