The quality of any boat with an intentionally lighter weight layup - no matter the manufacturer - is only altered if the user includes durability for getting whacked over being light weight as part of their own quality standard.
But carrying heavy loads, or handling bigger water conditions, is not a place where the Elite layup should have any higher risks. Can't say that the Elite Romany has been asked to haul a lot, but my Explorer LV is a precursor of the Elite layup, does have the lesser thickness of gel coat etc, and I have crammed it full here and there.
The place that the Elite layup may have higher risks, depending on your use and skill, is not where you seem to be focusing. It's when you hit land - literally - that this may show up. So it may take less of a hit to crack some gel coat off if you land on the rock rather than the sand to each side, or the boat hits the a hard beach without you if you swim while surfing, or it falls off the roof of the car onto pavement.
(We have tested the Elite Romany landing on dirt and grass from the roof of a station wagon - it was fine.)
The thing to remember is that the Elite layups still have structural reinforcement along the keel at the bow and stern. So if you do drop the stern on a concrete boat launch and the gel coat cracks off to the keel, the boat is still fine and will paddle home for you to put in some new gel coat. (I tested that one.)
But I still wonder about the Explorer being maybe too predictable and sluggish for you to be happy with compared to your other ride, and think you should at least try to get into a Pilgrim Expedition if you are thinking NDK. You are on the cusp, but still at the bottom end of weight to find the Explorer easy to push. The Pilgrim is coming in as a reliably faster hull.
If part of your issue has been the Nordie's stability, the Explorer does resolve that. The problem is that it resolves it by being the extreme opposite, as in feeling soooo safe that you could stop for tea without getting out. Shooting down the middle may leave you happier long term.
If you like the NDK Explorer… you’ll like the feeling of the Tiderace equivalent. Same designer, and the same ethic about having head room.
That said, my husband who is taller and heavier than than the OPer spent some time in the regular sized TR Excite. He found it so similar to the NDK Explorer in terms of head room that it didn’t quite live up to its name.
Beautifully made though - killer quality. My only comment is that if you hate looking at scratches, the black hull they like so much may not be the best idea. Don’t know about the weight.
Yup, a big person's size in the Xplore and a model line that is new to me, the Xscape. I am a little perplexed as to why they need the entire Xscape line, since Aled Williams designs all of his boats with a ton of head room for conditions. But the Xscape line may come into play more where they are based, with notably bigger conditions than paddlers in this country usually hit.
I am not sure what happened to the Tiderace information I cited from the “GO KAYAK NOW” blog. It was there early this morning, but now has disappeared. If you do a goggle search on ‘Tiderace 2012 catalog’ it will generate three hits to the subject blog, but all of them now generate the dreaded “error 404 - page not found”. I’ll go ask the author, perhaps they were ‘jumped-the-gun’ and were asked to pull their posting?
The blog actually covered the new 2012 boats from Tiderace and revised color schemes for all models. At the moment there is no mention of these new kayaks or colors on Tiderace’s own webpage.
This link seems to work, but it is not in English,
Do you recall? I saw two models/ model lines lines that were newer, the Xscape and the Xtreme, plus an X size of the Xplore as well as pics of a white/yellow and white/orange/color scheme on the Tiderace site. This was new to me, tho' I haven't been paying a lot of attention.
Sooo - did they go a size up and a size down from the original Xplore, as in neither is the size of that original one, or is the X size the original Xplore relabeled? I am assuming the XploreS is as before - that may also be wrong.
Thanks but… My question was how they expanded to three, not whether they had. When TideRace first launched, there were two of each in the Xcite and Xplorer, and only the S had a subscript. The other was without the additional tag.
“entry level layups” ? I’m not sure what that means. It could be hardier layups for paddlers who cannot control their boats and are likely to hit damaging objects or make hard landings. Or it could mean lighter layups for paddlers too timid to get near rocks. Or it could mean less expensive layups for entry level budgets
Layups Tiderace does a hardcore layup on all their kayaks except the cape models to offer a wider range of prices for people who still want a tide race hull. So it will be simpler to build, and less expensive without too much of a sacrifice of durability or weight. So this means, slightly heavier, less stiff and less expensive.
