The Tsunami 125 is a higher volume kayak designed for huskier paddlers, which at 165 lbs and 5’ 10" you are not – that is true of all the Tsunami series that end in “5”. If 12’ is your absolute length maximum, you should be looking at the 120 instead. Unless you are unusually bottom-heavy, the 125 will have too much room in the seat to give you good contact with the boat.
Yes, a Tsunami would be safer in LIS. It has dual bulkheads, deck safety lines (to aid you in climbing back into the kayak if you capsized in deep water) and a standard size cockpit that will support a sprayskirt. Sprayskirts on the oversized cockpits in the Aspire and Pungo will implode (collapse into your lap) when enough water collects on them.
You will get used to entering a standard cockpit. There are several ways to do so depending on how flexible you are. Most of my kayaks have cockpits about the size of the Tsunami’s and my legs are probably close in size to yours (32" inseam). I can plunk my butt in the seat and then draw each leg in one at a time, or sit on the back of the coaming and slide both feet and legs in first, then drop into the seat. A standard cockpit also helps you keep inside the boat for bracing and if you ever learn to roll because your knees and thighs can lock under the deck in front of the coaming (rim of the cockpit). Large cockpits are for boats designed to be used in flat, shallow water. .
It appears that WS has discontinued any tsunami smaller than 125. But if you take the advice to look around at used boats to get the right ride, which includes going later season options like Marshalls, you can find the right boat.
As has been said already, something longer will usually be faster. Tracking is a function of the hull design.
But what a number of us are saying here is that a step up from the Aspire will also be safer, an idea which you can’t get right now because you have not experienced capsizing in anything real and having to reenter from the water. Please capsize that Aspire somewhere safe and try to get back into it near shore but your feet not touching. River, not in the Sound for this experiment. Don’t want to cause another tragic newspaper story.
Then come back to the board about options for boats for the Sound.
Nowhere as knowledgable as people on here, being we are a couple of newbies and lily dippers. Just my 2cents. I am about your size maybe 10 pounds lighter but long legged 34" inseam. We looked at the pungo 120 regular and ultralight. We liked the large cockpit idea, thinking it would be easier to access. However, further reading on here we began to question the need or the benefit for us.
The boats we purchased have the much smaller cockpit 35X19 that really are very easy to enter and exit. In fact the cockpit is a tad smaller than the Tsunami mentioned. That was part of the calculation as we wanted to be able to use a spray skirt when we do fall color tour paddling.
Kayaks designed for open water (like big windy lakes and the seacoast with waves and chop) have a more vee-shaped narrower hull than flatter-hulled recreational calm water boats like the Aspire – though the Pungos have slightly modified that, they are still mainly aimed at flat, shallow water paddling. A vee-shaped hull takes waves, chop and boat wakes with greater ease, even when hit broadside. It will ride up over a wave without pitching you out and punch through if you hit a wave head on without getting pushed sideways… A wide flat-bottom boat hit broadside by a wave or wake can pitch you over like flipping a pancake. Novices will often feel a little unsteady in a vee-hulled touring kayak because they can feel “twitchy” or wobbly when you first sit in them. But once you get used to them, and get the feel how they can be leaned over without capsizing (that is called “secondary stability”) you will find you feel more secure in them in coastal conditions than you would in a rec style boat.
Another problem with short, wide flat boats is that if you get drawn any distance off shore in a coastal environment by currents and wind you may find yourself really struggling to get back to land because of the tracking shortcomings and just the effort to propel a wide boat that is constantly being turned about by waves. Weather can change quickly in coastal conditions and the increasing use of short kayaks has created a problem for marine rescue operations in some coastal areas.
It’s kind of problematic that boats designed for shallow calm water have been tagged “recreational style” kayaks. Most people buy kayaks for “recreation” no matter what waters they intend to paddle so the vague descriptor doesn’t really clarify what the design limitations are. Though most responsible manufacturers are fairly specific about what waters the boats are intended for, some ,make inappropriate claims for the range of usage. The kind of boats that would be appropriate for the kind of day trips along the Sound that you are thinking of would be those classified as “day touring”.
I mostly plan to do the calm waters but do see my self occasionally hitting the LI sound. So is a WS Tsunami 125 a good do it all kayak that besides being safer will also be faster and track better than the Aspire and Pungo 120? By the way, the Tsunami 125 is actually 12’ 9" (so almost 13’). One more, why are we saying that the WS 125 and 145, etc are for larger people and the 120, 140 are for smaller people when the spec shows the cockpit being the same size (140 vs 145, etc) and the only difference I see is the 145 has an extra 6" in length?
Hi Avi. Good questions. Ok, if we were talking canoes this would all be clearer. Honestly, they have usually managed the capacity issue better in their online tables than kayak makers.
Update - I just read guideboat guy’s stuff on the 120 vs the 125 below and can’t make much sense of things. Looked at their 2015 product guide, a pdf, which says the cockpit length is shorter for the 120 and the depth is deeper for the 125. No numbers, but not matching what guideboat guy found except for the 25 lb capacity diff. Must be inconsistent info out there on those measurements. Below is how it normally works.
All boats - any kind including motorized - have an designed waterline for that hull where they hit the ideal balance of stability and maneuverability. Kayaks for larger paddlers require more weight in the cockpit to sink them to that waterline than kayaks for smaller paddlers. Being a smaller paddler myself, l can tell you of boats l have tried which behave fine as long as l was willing to drop 30 plus pounds of ballast into the boat every time l took it out. One of them is our basement, it worked well for my bigger husband. I was simply above the waterline for it to perform at its best, an inch and a half or 2 inches too high, unless l added more ballast. It is a diamond chined boat so you can absolutely see l am sitting too high. Too bad because it is a very fun boat.
The cockpit size does not necessarily have to change for a bigger paddler because of the additional depth from the front of the cockpit to the bottom of boat, which is usually more in kayaks for larger paddlers. What seems like a trivial dimension change in height turns into a really effective change for fitting longer legs or otherwise larger body parts into that cockpit. You see it the deck height measurements.
I just looked up specs for both the 120 and 125. The 125 is longer and slightly wider, with a slightly wider cockpit. The rated capacity of the 125 is 25 pounds greater (which admittedly, doesn’t seem like much). Not a single dimension when comparing the two boats is identical, though strangely, the deck height of the 125 is listed as being 1/4 of an inch lower than that of the 120. In any case, the 125 is billed on the Wilderness Systems website as being “the ideal day tripper for larger paddlers.” I would make a guess that the fact that “small paddlers” are practically a thing of the past, in terms of mass market potential, could be why the 120 has been discontinued.
Small paddlers are still a lot of women. That population has not much changed even including the increase in obesity. I think it is more that there are more casual paddlers and barges feel more reassuring.
So if i understand you correctly you’re saying that the 125 may not be a good option for me due to my light weight. This will not get the boat in the water deep enough and as a result i may lose stability? Speed?
If that is the case they should really spec the desired weight range and not just the max weight
@Celia said:
Small paddlers are still a lot of women. That population has not much changed even including the increase in obesity. I think it is more that there are more casual paddlers and barges feel more reassuring.
What would you say are the size ranges?
when we were looking/reading what the difference between small, medium and large was never very clear.
DH is 5/8 and will weigh between 135-145 depending on time of the year. The 135 is middle of summer activity weight
I’m 5/10-11 and 155-160 and that is running about 5-10 pounds more than 1 year ago before my lengthy illness. Starting to loose the extra.
Part of sizing is boat width to get the paddle well into the water. He is in the smaller end of average height and could find himself enjoying the responsiveness of a small paddlers boat on his weight.
Height and weight put you more into average.
Avi, max wright is used because it is assumed you also need to carry gear. Especially for places like the Sound.
The way to figure this out well is to understand how to use the contact points in the boat to maneuver it and try boats to see if they give you a comfortable level of control.
If your only interest is paddling forward fast this is just not an area you have likely spent time on. That is why people here commonly suggest a basic class to figure out how kayaks can be maneuvered before buying the boat. Especially for environments like the Sound that call for both more boat and more paddler.
There are things that take more time to do well than younger new people like. Big water kayaking is one of them.
Valley lists weight ranges at their website. Current Designs states: “We don’t publish recommended paddler weights due to differences in physical proportions and paddling experience.” They do provide size icons with boat descriptions. Couldn’t find any size info at P&H, although they do sell HV, MV, and LV boats. Same with Eddyline. Wilderness doesn’t give actual weights/height but has a small paddler option for boat choice. Those are just a few that I checked.
I’ve seen a number of guys who were not much taller than me and very lean with little body fat. I’d classify them as small paddlers compared to some of the big guys. Some paddled LV boats, some MV, some Delphins and even a few skinned Greenland boats.
A LV boat I demoed is sized by its manufacturer as designed for a medium paddler. If I had wider hips, it would have been a very good fit. Remedied that by using a couple of makeshift hip pads. On the other hand, I was told having snug hip contact in a sea/touring kayak is old school; that you need space for hip rotation. That made sense as I’ve considered replacing my boat’s hip pads with thinner ones.
I think the best way to determine if you’re sized correctly for a kayak is to paddle it.
As to optimal waterline - no idea. I weigh 110#, my boat weighs 47# and I paddle with empty hatches, except for the day hatch. I once asked a coach about adding some weight since I get blown around in high winds. He told me: “we all do.”
I find it difficult to believe that the weight rating or intended paddler size makes much difference when deciding between the Tsunami 120 and 125, since the differences in all dimensions except length are in the realm of half an inch, and the difference in the specified maximum load is only 25 pounds. Such a difference in load rating might not necessarily mean much when comparing different boats from different makers, but when comparing two nearly-identical boats from the same maker (who presumably used the same method for determining the load rating in both cases), I’d say this means there isn’t much difference here. Maybe this lack of significant difference is why the smaller model was discontinued.
In this case I’d probably choose the boat that has a bit more length, since that’s a difference that WILL be noticeable. That’s my opinion based on the numbers, but we’ll see if the kayak experts here can show that the numbers don’t actually apply.
@Celia said:
Part of sizing is boat width to get the paddle well into the water. He is in the smaller end of average height and could find himself enjoying the responsiveness of a small paddlers boat on his weight.
Height and weight put you more into average.
Might explain why Jim felt more comfortable in the Sky 10 vs the Skylark that I went with. Thanks
Almost every one of the comments from @Avi have focused on (or at least mentioned) speed and tracking, with a stated destination of rivers but the aspiration for bigger water. I’m just not convinced a short fat boat is the right way to go here. The limitation is, of course, the storage space. But getting a boat that fits in the garage doesn’t make it fit for a particular purpose.