My wife and I are wanting to get some larger kayaks. I went to a kayak store and talked to a Salesman but he was more wanting me to just buy the most expensive kayak without actually giving me good information. I plan on buying a 14ft kayak which I should be able to handle considering I am 6 foot 3 and have some kayaking experience. I wife is 5 foot 2 and barely pushing 130 lb and very little experience. I want her to get somewhat of a larger kayak also so she can be out with me, I found one that’s 13 ft long but could not find any information whether she would be able to handle it or not. So how big is too big?
Define big.
I think 14ft is kind of short. But a 14ft with 23" beam seakayak makes a good play boat, but not as good a distance boat.
Perhaps you need to define how you are going to use the boat, type of boat. There have also been lots of discussions on this topic…every week.
Can you rent “bigger” boats and find out?
I would start by reading an article on the basic types of kayaks out there, and letting us know what style kayak you are considering. Can be read online at http://www.calkayakermag.com/magazine.html. Issue 10/Spring 2013 starting with page 6.
You will see there that for some types of kayaks (say white water), 13-14’ would be huge. But for other types of kayaks, say surf skis, there is nothing that short available. So it really depends on the type of kayak you are looking at.
No no no. I am one inch taller and 5 pounds heavier than you wife. You are not thinking about this correctly. And thinking about this incorrectly often results in the guy who took charge being a solo paddler.
First, what your wife needs in order to have a pleasant paddling experience is one that is lower volume and easier to paddle than yours. That means narrower, so that she can get the paddle into the water without nailing her knuckles or torquing around for a guaranteed backache. And a lower deck than yours, for the same reason. You don’t worry about the length until after you have solved those issues. Though I will say right now, you are unlikely to find a boat that fits her well in width and height that is less than 12 feet long. So you will end up at the right length by doing the volume part correctly.
For example in the Wilderness Systems line something like the Zephyr or the smallest Tsunami. Yes I see a 10 footer listed for the “smaller paddler”, but it ain’t small enough. Smaller paddler traditionally is rated against an average sized guy, not an average size woman.
Also, get her a paddle with a smaller blade than yours. She can keep the same speed by having a higher cadence. But a big blade will just slow her down and tear apart her shoulders.
This is what we are looking at for her it is an “old town”. I tried asking for the model number and he gave me this (XTC1989M80). Which when searched came up with nothing. It seems pretty narrow, we plan on using it for a variety of things, but mainly in bays and larger lakes.
Super that you’ve asked some questions here before making a leap. Alas, I didn’t and my first kayak was short, wide and I hated it within weeks.
You mention paddling bays and large lakes. Does the old Old Town have any sealed bulkheads? How wide is it? Looks like it could use some deck and perimeter lines. They’re very helpful if you find yourself in the water trying to keep your kayak from floating away.
Here’s a very good link which provides excellent information on a number of topics relating to paddling. http://www.paddlesafely.com/
Hope you find kayaks that will keep you and your wife happy and safe.
Old Town kayaks tend to be wide, heavy, deep and slow. They are also sized for the “common denominator” of human (mainly male) meaning that they tend to be way too big for most smaller women. And by “big” I mean in volume – as Celia explained, a shorter and slimmer person in a deep and wide cockpit will be uncomfortable, bang their hands on the gunwales (sides) and have difficulty efficiently reaching the water. That does not look like a kayak I would want to paddle. The seat position is deep and the seat back is too high. And that aluminum shaft paddle is awful (all aluminum paddles are awful). In a high volume kayak, a lighter person sits too high in the water, too, which can effect performance. Sometimes you have to add ballast, like jugs of water in the hatches, to improve that.
Kayaks need a certain amount of displacement volume so they can support the weight of the paddler. Shorter kayaks have to be wider to compensate, which can make them less suitable for shorter and lighter people. When a kayak is longer it can be narrower and still displace the same cubic inches of water, while giving a more petite paddler better contact within the cockpit and an easier reach to the water – plus a boat with a longer water line tends to be faster and easier to propel. At 5’ 5" and 150 lbs. I am slightly larger than your wife, but my favorite kayak is 18’ long and 20" wide with a very low deck. I have a bunch of kayaks at the moment – two around 15’ and two around 14’, all low volume. The shortest I have is 12’ long and because it is so short it is the widest (at 26") and therefore the slowest, but it’s lightweight for travel (23 pounds) and OK for narrow winding streams.
I agree we would need more information about where you intend to paddle. For a guy your size, 14’ is short for a touring kayak (and if you are in the PNW you have access to seacoast and large windy lakes and rivers, where touring or sea kayaks are the preferred craft.) Unless you are sticking to small lakes and sheltered rivers, I think you are thinking too short for both of you. And your wife should have the same length boat as you, at minimum, just one that is narrower and lower volume. Otherwise she will be at a disadvantage, both in comfort and performance.
I just tried and so far cannot find that boat. But the material tells me it is an older model. That said, this boat has many characteristics that make it crucial to know where you plan to paddle. The high seat back is actually clipped to the deck rigging so it was never intended to see waves - couldn’t use a skirt if you wanted. No perimeter rigging or bulkheads. In sum a quiet flat pond kind of boat.
Probably also too big for your wife to paddle comfortable.
As to your boat, you could find a big guy’s boat with some manufacturers near that length if you poked around. But on legroom alone, let alone overall size, you will likely find the better fits are closer to 15 feet long.
So, I could be wrong, but that looks like an old sit inside kayak which they modified to use a modern sit on top seat. The top of the seat is connected to pad eyes toward the front of the cockpit - I suspect those pad eyes were added afterward to accommodate the seat.
There isn’t a hatch visible for the front, so likely there are not bulkheads nor any inherent flotation. Without this, you can;t get back in on the water. So as is you would not want to paddle it any further from shore than you can swim (and keep in mind, if the PNW in your name means Pacific North West, you have cold waters, which drastically cut the distances you can swim).
There are not deck lines on the kayak, which means it was likely built in the 90s or before. Deck lines have been standard ever since, as they are an important safety aspect.
The number you gave likely was a hull ID number (a boat’s equivalent to a serial number). XTC1989M80 would mean it was built in 1980 (the last 2 digits).
The paddle is an old, heavy clunker. Not worth anything. You’d want to replace as fast as possible.
We haven’t even talked yet about how well it has aged (any damage, etc.). 37 years old is very old for a kayak. I would skip on this and stick to a more recent kayak - say 10 yeas old or less. Less age (so hopefully less likely to be damage), and designs that have improved (for both performance and safety) over the years.
What’s the weight of that boat? To me, it looks kind of like 1980s era fiberglass or Kevlar whitewater type boat similar to my Phoenix boat.
Exactly where in the PNW are you located? My sister has an Old Town 13.5’ Cayuga that is in new condition and my BIL has a 14’ Old Town Durego (sp?) which also has barely been used. I don’t think either of them are ever going to use these boats again due to physical impairments (age related). We live in southwest Washington and I think they would sell these boats. The boats have always been stored indoors.
@magooch said:
Exactly where in the PNW are you located? My sister has an Old Town 13.5’ Cayuga that is in new condition and my BIL has a 14’ Old Town Durego (sp?) which also has barely been used. I don’t think either of them are ever going to use these boats again due to physical impairments (age related). We live in southwest Washington and I think they would sell these boats. The boats have always been stored indoors.
I live on the south coast of Oregon, just south of Coos Bay.
@Peter-CA said:
So, I could be wrong, but that looks like an old sit inside kayak which they modified to use a modern sit on top seat. The top of the seat is connected to pad eyes toward the front of the cockpit - I suspect those pad eyes were added afterward to accommodate the seat.There isn’t a hatch visible for the front, so likely there are not bulkheads nor any inherent flotation. Without this, you can;t get back in on the water. So as is you would not want to paddle it any further from shore than you can swim (and keep in mind, if the PNW in your name means Pacific North West, you have cold waters, which drastically cut the distances you can swim).
There are not deck lines on the kayak, which means it was likely built in the 90s or before. Deck lines have been standard ever since, as they are an important safety aspect.
The number you gave likely was a hull ID number (a boat’s equivalent to a serial number). XTC1989M80 would mean it was built in 1980 (the last 2 digits).
The paddle is an old, heavy clunker. Not worth anything. You’d want to replace as fast as possible.
We haven’t even talked yet about how well it has aged (any damage, etc.). 37 years old is very old for a kayak. I would skip on this and stick to a more recent kayak - say 10 yeas old or less. Less age (so hopefully less likely to be damage), and designs that have improved (for both performance and safety) over the years.
Sounds good to me, we might just go back to the dealer and have her try out a couple different models till we can find one she likes. I don’t want to buy a brand new kayak because I am not certain she will use it very often.
So you have some water right there that is fairly protected, but how much does the bay dry out at low tide? I know it doesn’t dry up too much as I’m aware that big ships go in there. Anyway I have to assume that it can get pretty lumpy out there at times. If the bay is going to be where you plan to paddle, I would urge you to consider sea kayaks.
First is budget but you can get a fine sea kayak for 500-1,000 or less. I Agree it’s 37 years old.
Please be sure to try paddling the kayak shown in the pictures at least 2 - 3 miles n flat water before you even think about purchasing it. I have had the pleasure (for some value of pleasure) of towing an old town that looked like that for a couple of miles. It was based on a WW salom kayak from the '70s and needed some experience to keep moving straight.
A short paddle helps with turny boats. I use a 205cm on my Phoenix ww kayak on lakes and have no directional challenges. Longer paddles increase the challenge and decrease the pleasure.
I just dug around in my phots and found a shot of the kayak I mentioned & it looks very much like the one posted above. The paddler is Charlie Parmalee who knows what he is coing … and loand his Sea Wind to the original paddler.
I’d try that boat that Charlie’s paddling.
I notice that the boat has no spray skirt and looking at the conditions, I would not like to be paddling without one there. That said, a good paddler could overcome/ignore those shortcomings if there was no occasion to lean the boat significantly.
And while it may seem fine on a river which can push it along a bit, it is probably a pig in calm water or (worse) a following sea. Despite the weight of the paddler, it seems to have a lot of profile out of the water (probably to compensate for the difficulty or inability of using a spray skirt) and would probably offer a lot of surface to the wind. The lack of rigging suggests it wasn’t intended for ocean use.
It might work for some, but it lacks the design characteristics I’d look for when paddling oceans and bays.
Rick