Has anyone tried the light weight pak canoes? how do they handle? How is the wear and tear?
Thanks.
I have a Pakboat 140 Solo
I like it alot. Took it on a 120 mile canoe trip on the Green River last spring. It worked great, and was simple as pie to transport on a commercial airliner. Handling was odd at first with the boat flexing some in waves. But once accustomed, it perfromed wonderfully.
PK
Pakcanoe is a good canoe
I have an older Pakcanoe from when they were marketed by Mad River; mine is an Escape 14.
I was a little (pleasantly) surprised at how similar it feels to paddling my same-size royalex canoe. On flat water I don’t notice the flex. It feels just like paddling my other canoe except that it is lighter weight! In rapids the main difference is that I do less bailing with the pakcanoe because it tends to flex over the waves rather than plunge into them. Paddling in Arkansas this spring I found that the pakcanoe fabric tends to stick to rocks rather than slide off as royalex would - don’t know if the current models have the same tendency to stick. The rocks didn’t seem to harm the fabric though - didn’t look like I left behind pieces of the “skin” the way I leave behind scrapings of vinyl off of royalex canoes! (I tried to avoid testing this very much, however.)