Coaster?
A Mariner Coaster at 13'5" is certainly not a glorified rec boat, but a bona fide sea kayak with surfing ability, and can be used for touring as well. There are numerous other boats under 15' that are capable sea kayaks, as well. Length is not a sufficient criterion in itself, IMO.
PS Phrancis, I just saw your post on a parallel thread re: how capable the AT-14 is, so your 15' length cutoff makes even less sense....
Paddling, a jargon filled zone
I haven’t paid close attention to canoeing for the past 8 years, so this thread is the first time I have ever encountered a distinction between a touring canoe and a sea canoe.
Yet, in the physical world of actual canoes plying the main, the tarn or the vly, I haven’t seen any new shape or style of canoe that would justify such a linguistic distinction.
Oh, I forgot, you Americans call a canoe a kayak, don’t you.
AT-14
I never considered or called the AT-14 a sea or touring kayak, due to it’s length and lower volume. There will always be exceptions to the rule as far as performance and abilities in specific length boats, but most books consider sea or touring kayaks 15’ and longer.
Yes, you could probably “tour” with a shorter boat on the sea as seen in the famous video… http://www.winacube.us/watch/5723525/
Diff from manufacturers
As long as everyone is still stuck in the label thing - I looked up some manufacturers' web sites. Here's what I found.
P&H and Valley out of the UK, NDSK out of Wales, name their entire product line Sea Kayaks. They then group boats by intended use/capability - expedition, play, whatever. Since these guys make boats intended for use off an island surrounded by a darned nasty ocean, this makes sense.
Manufacturers in the US have a different approach, but then again they also have a greater array of boats. And some of these brands like Wilderness Systems ARE sold in the UK and do rather well. For someone currently in paddling, this distinction shouldn't seem too foreign, especially if they have been residing in this country for quite a while.
Wilderness Systems has "Recreational", "Touring" and "Sea" kayaks. The touring kayaks are described by WS as having stability from the recreational side but more capability or features for bigger water. Their Touring kayaks are what the UK manufacturers call a sea kayak. Touring in their lexicon is not the same as a full sea kayak. http://www.wildernesssystems.com/pages/index/homepage
Perception has the same nomenclature. http://www.perceptionkayaks.com/product_homepage/index/products
Current Designs has the same three groupings in terms of boat design, but calls them Recreational, Transitional and Touring. So their Transitional boats are WS's and Perception's Touring boats, and CD's touring boats are WS's and Perception's Sea kayaks. http://www.cdkayak.com/
Necky has Recreation, Day Touring and Touring equivalent to WS's and Perception's Recreation, Touring and Sea and CD's Recreational, Transitional and Touring.http://www.neckykayaks.com/
Where there are three groups named, by whatever name, it appears that the middle group is designed to poke their nose out of the harbor safely, but not necessarily shoot for the island two miles offshore.
Dagger lumps Recreational and Touring together, but their current line doesn't include anything equivalent to the other manufacturers' sea kayaks. http://www.dagger.com/product_homepage/index/product_homepage
Lincoln Kayaks, a smaller US manufacturer, has boats that'd fit into WS's "Touring" as well as "Sea" category but they don't use such labels. Their web site says what the boat is intended to handle.
http://www.lincolncanoe.com/
Another US manufacturer, Hurricane, also does not group their boats. They include what they think the boat is in the description of each. They also only have one boat that they talk about being on the sea, the Tracer, and their description calls it a "sea-worthy touring kayak". Link here - http://www.hurricaneaquasports.com/index.html
Venture Kayaks, which are a Brit maker since they are owned by Pyrahnna, have "Light Touring" (equivalent to WS's and Perceptions' Touring and CED's Transitional") and "Touring" (equivalent to Sea in the first two or CD's Touring). http://www.hurricaneaquasports.com/index.html
Obviously I had some time to knock around this morning... but what got me going is the amount of dialogue that was still running from people here about what a "touring" versus a "sea" kayak is. I suspect that the OPer was thinking of the nomenclature used by WS and Perception, but this is an impossible discussion unless speakers identify whose naming convention they are using - WS and Perception, CD, Venture etc. Otherwise it's not about any particular boats, just peoples' personal associations from boats they've owned or paddled.
In most of the manufacturers' lines there is a real diff between the middle capability and full sea/expedition capable boats. The newer oddballs like the Alchemy and the Delphin, as well as the older Coaster, are outliers. There are far more boat models that fall into one of these neater categories.
decked canoe
In the most basic definition, a kayak is a decked canoe.
Though the most noted sanctioning organizations on both sides of the pond are ‘canoe’ associations/unions (ACA & BCU) both have come to call certain craft kayaks.
Not an American idiosyncrasy
You might note that some of the most respected and longest established manufacturers of the type of boat under discussion in the UK include the term kayak in their name:
P&H Custom Sea Kayaks, Valley Sea Kayaks, Sea Kayaking UK (formerly Nigel Dennis Kayaks), North Shore Sea Kayaks, etc…
So, calling these boats kayaks it is not simply an American idiosyncrasy
Uh… Valley Canoe
VCP, Valley Canoe Products. Name change, I presume. Maybe others have changed, too.
Another word to take back from marketers
Twelve years ago when I purchased the domain touringkayaks.com, “touring” kayak was pretty much synonymous with “sea” kayak. Or that’s what I believed anyway; otherwise I would not have chosen the term as my business is selling sea kayaks.
Seems to be another example of a perfectly good word that has been appropriated by marketers. (Try googling “kayak” and you get a ticketing agency). The current ambiguity of the term seems to have come from a more recent marketing strategy (in the last 10 years) to produce something a little longer than a rec kayak and then give it an “upscale” name.
Seems to me a touring kayak ought to be one fully equipped and capable of touring, including overnight touring, in all kinds of conditions, in all kinds of bodies of water, including the sea, but not limited to the sea. Sounds kinda like a sea kayak to me.
Sea canoeing was the original term
Derek Hutchinson's first book was entitled "Sea Canoeing":
http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Canoeing-Derek-Hutchinson/dp/0713620056/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_6
That's what he and others were calling sea kayaking 30 years ago. His later books referred to sea kayaking.
The British club, as everyone knows, is the British CANOE Union.
That's the point I and others are making. The names for the very same things change over time -- not only the adjectives like "sea" and "touring", but even the very nouns such as "canoe" and "kayak".
For many decades there have been kayaks that are:
-- long, medium and short
-- big, medium and small
-- skinny, medium with and wide
-- high volume, medium and low volume
If someone wants to select some combination of those characteristics and call it a "touring" kayak, that's fine and dandy. But all they have invented is a new word, not a new kayak.
Wow, Celia I feel sad for you
You took all that time on your post and “why”. Who cares? Jeez this P-net thing is real to some of ya’ll to the point of thesis material. Type less paddle more and who gives a shit about half of this crap?
Hey, not judging as I’ve added too much here over the years as well. None of it matters unless there’s some
weird relaxation thing involved…
This is why…
these boards can be so hard at times. The responses fly around from not confirming exactly what the OPer was referring to, to someone whose profile says CT but makes odd cracks about us Americans to you assuming a long post indicates a lack of worthwhile activity.
Keep dreaming I guess. I wouldn't have posted what you did though - way judgmental.
At least Necky has some more useful labeling by those who have been longer at this kayaking thing. The thought process behind their naming groups may have informed this thread... but your time was better used analyzing my issues from the other side of the continent. And they say women are emotional!
Same change here
Still want to say transitional for these in-between boats. But a lot of people looking at kayaks now have a very jumbled idea of what touring kayak means. It’s something to be aware of if you are talking to newbies or someone interested in kayaking.
VCP changed to VSK a few years ago
Brits have been using the term for long enough for it not to be news.
I have Valley literature from 1985 wherein they refer to their boats as kayaks. SKUK had been Nigel Dennis Kayaks starting in 1993.
touring vs. not touring
Dgremlin
Call it “touring”, call it “sea” but if you are going to be out in the wind and the waves and not on smooth-as-glass water on your lake, you want a boat that can handle those kind of conditions. Not all boats marketed as “recreational touring boats” are stable in those conditions.
A rudder or skeg can be helpful too.
I also noted from your profile that you paddle slow rivers and stuff.
Are you planning on using the same boat in current and around rocks?
If so, plastic is more friendly to rocks than fiberglass. Unless your river is really wide, you might not want to be in a very long (16’ plus) boat as well. Harder to turn and maneuver in currents.
Based on the information in your post and in your profile, maybe a plastic boat?
I had (and still do, my husband paddles it now) a 14’ Tsunami which I’ve used in the ocean, on the river and in lakes. I’ve camped in it, learned rough water in it and with the addition of a smart trac rudder, managed it in winds.
Its not nearly as graceful or responsive as my Romany, but its stable, possible to roll, comfortable and not too expensive. Some people call it a rec boat, some people call it a touring boat, but it cost me all of about 800.00 new!
Other manufacturers have boats in the same space. Or, you can get something more performance orientated, less volume, more maneuverable and more spendy!
And the American club is the
American Canoe Association, as I mentioned above.
I was responding to the comment about Americans calling canoes ‘kayaks.’
good point
as kayaks did not exist prior to Dereks (excellent) book.
You seem to miss my point
No disrespect, and sorry if I am misreading you.
I’m not making a point about history, except inasmuch as it teaches us that the very same entity can be called different things at different times in different places.
When the same entity can be called a the “ocean” or the “main”, a “lake” or a “tarn”, a “swamp” or a “vly” … or a “canoe” or a “kayak” … that should give us a clue that we are simply talking about jargon differences when we encounter sudden appearance of an ambiguous term such as “touring kayak”.
You might want to think about what the word “sea” is doing in front of the word “kayak” in the first place. Are “sea” kayaks only paddled on the sea?