Does anyone have any experience with DuraLite? I’ve been shopping for a duralite Wilderness Systems kayak but I am concerned about the durability. The weight reduction is nice but are there any compromises (other than $$)?
Inquiries about Duralite have been
fairly frequent. Concerns have been expressed about whether the weight savings is or is not accompanied by increased susceptibility to distortion from racks, etc. and whether the Duralite hulls might be so flexible as to not be capable of performing as expected, based on design.
I have no personal experience with “Duralite” boats, but from my experience with “poly” boats in general (I have owned four), I don’t see much merit in trying to make the hull thinner. The one company with really stiffer plastic is Prijon, but even they don’t try to shave weight.
Probably folks with direct Duralite experience will chime in when this post gets bumped. You could also search the archives for Duralite posts.
Duralite
is a form of thermoform plastics, I think 
Other companies have similar stuff as well - Perception/Dagger’s Airalite and Eddyline’s Carbonlite 2000.
My impression, based on reading
past discussions, is that Duralite is NOT like those plastics, but is just a thin spin of poly.
pretty tough stuff
I had a Duralite Tsunami 145 for 4 years and was not gentle with it. My only concern was storing the boat flat on homemade racks did cause denting from the boat’s own weight. Started storing it on it’s side and had no more problems. I beat the heck out of the boat and it was still in good enough shape to sell and make a second owner happy.
my error
Got confused by all -lites
BTW, corelite - is one more term to throw into the mix.
Thanks for the Insight
Was your kayak permanently deformed when you stored it on its back?