Question on kayak size and seaworthiness

the deal
is that you should not wet-exit in rough water as the amount of water taken on will pretty much make a self-rescue near impossible. I don’t think your getting the point regarding ‘sea worthiness’, the hull shape itself no restriction for rough water.

Rolling, Contact Points
Yah I definitely want to take some rolling lessons, and will have a chance this weekend. Wouldn’t even think of going into surf without them…Anyway, I have dont a wet reentry, it was a little tricky staying balanced but I did it. As far as contact points go, I have the foot braces set so that when my feet are in them, my knees are right up against the knee pads, and it seems a pretty good fit. I really appreciate all the input here

For rolling…

– Last Updated: Jan-17-08 7:18 AM EST –

You may find that if your knees aren't secured at least a little from the side, they'll tend to want to slip sideways when starting the roll. Also that putting that load on your knees rather than your thigh or more on the side of your leg could be unkind to your joints.

See how it goes with the first session, but if you find yourself slipping around at all go for the thigh braces. They'll give you a little more apt support.

Don’t assume “modern plastic”…
… is superior to anything, particularly SOF.



Amazing the assumptions folks make about sea worthiness and durability, and how they change after building and paddling them…



Most paddling SOF for recreation use float bags in their SOF. Mine still paddles very nicely if I flood it to the rim (above the outside water level). No real change in stability - it’s just heavier and a bit slower to respond.



There just isn’t much room for water in it like there is in typical high volume commercial kayaks. What water there is gets distributed evenly end to end, and can’t slosh around due to lack of open space and the internal frame.



My sea kayak keeps all the water in the cockpit area between the bulkheads and it can slosh around quite a bit - so it’s more of a handful with a lot of water in it.



A rec boat, being even larger inside - would be even harder to manage - and having a bulkhead at one end only can lead to some pretty hairy situations. Even with flotation added forward it’s still uneven and can leave you increasingly nose down as water comes in (bags need to be well secured or it gets even worse fast) - which means you’re going nowhere fast - but over, and out…

Didn’t assume anything.
Wasn’t knocking SOFs or bolstering the wonders of

modern plastic. Was refering to my experience and comfort level in a rec boat on big water. Stated my chances were just as good – not better than someone living a hundred years ago.

I don’t have to design or build a particular

kayak to know what works for me.



READ before you decide to condescend.

"better than someone"
Your words, not mine.

re: seaworthiness
Looked up the word seaworthiness…basically defined as the ability of the craft to withstand the conditions which it is in …having said that…i have W/S cape lookout 15.5’ that tends to punch thru a wave, and get wash over the front deck, rather than ride up and over…i have a CD Solstice GT 17.7’ that will ride up and over the wave much, much better than the Lookout will , therefore i consider the CD boat, with it’s higher bow nose, to be more seaworthy. higher bows may be more windprone but they sure make a big diff when taking waves headon.

size and seaworthiness
Design and construction have a lot to do with how sea worthy a kayak is. The paddlers size, strength, and skill have a lot to do with what size the kayak should be.

Is a Chatham seaworthy?
… Never paddled one, but in my review of that boat, based on what I’ve read in other reviews …



Sorry…



IMHO, a rec boat’s hull is designed for primary stability, so it would be less able to handle situations where seconday becomes more important. Also the larger open cockpit means that rough water could implode a skirt. Sea kayaks have smaller, tighter cockpit openings, so skirts have less surface area.





With that said, I’m sure a skilled paddler can take a rec boat into some interesting conditions.



On the other hand, my P140 tandum took a couple of steep 2 footers, filled up and for all practical purposes was sunk.

Here’s another aspect to this…
…with regards to kayaks specifically:



While boat design characteristics are important, there’s a reason so many people will also mention how important the paddler is in the “kayak seaworthiness” equation.



Let’s for a moment consider the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald…



Imagine that ship in the conditions in which she went down. The seaworthiness of the hull, and the control the skipper had was all contained within the mass of the ship itself. Now imagine a proportionally “giant sized” paddler sitting deep in the middle of that ship, equipped with a paddle and some skills. There’s a great deal deal of difference now, yes?



The weight of the paddler (ballast) relative to the size of the boat, plus the balancing, bracing, and power capability of the paddler would make a very big difference in whether or not that boat would have gone down.



Melissa

large cockpits and implosion
i agree in principle, but by way of comparison, and to play devils advocate, look at the Jackson kayaks Super Fun, a serious white water play kayak. 37.5 inches long. it’s huge, like a rec kayak. yet with the right skirt, it works fine, in the heaviest of water. i paddled that boat and rolled multiple times in big rapids last weekend and the skirt held fine. just saying…

Which skirt

– Last Updated: Jan-18-08 8:25 AM EST –

As above, WW boats have quite large cockpits and regularly go thru holes or big standing waves that would, without something stopping them, love to fill the boat with water. But for WW you use a skirt with much tighter fit, better seal around the coaming than many long boaters use and, as far as I've seen, always a neoprene deck. Relatively few beginners in rec type boats, or even the lower end of touring boats, would be comfortable with the kind of skirts that a WW boat requires. I sure wasn't when I started.

This actually is one of my pet peeves about rolling classes. While a WW boat may be an apt choice for beginner sessions due to pool size or overall volume, most of the skirts that would be used with these boats in a WW run should be left in the locker room. IMO, They are unnecessarily or even dangerously hard to release for someone starting out, who should be in a skirt that'll if anything fall off the coaming until the person is very comfortable going over.

(This is based on personal experience - I had a major freak-out in my first class because of one of those skirts. Obviously I got over it, but it wouild have taken only a slightly different panic response than I had to end up in a newpaper story.)

You got me there …
… I know nothing about WW boats (except used one once in a rolling class…). As Celia points out, and I recall, the skirt was neo, and a tight fit like the one I use on my T165.



I was thinking more of the kind of skirt you can get for a rec boat … at least all I’ve seen anyway. I remember looking at one for the P140 (after I sank it) … as I recall, there was only one I could find at the paddle shop … nylon, and not a “skin tight” fit like Neo … by that I mean rather than a flat, tight surface area, it sagged down around my knees, even though it was tight around the rim. Seemed to me that a lot of water could sit in there, and that pressure could roll the elastic over the rim.