After rotator cuff surgery, I wasn’t sure how I would do for kayaking this summer. Did 9 miles on Sunday. I am so glad we bought much lighter weight kayaks several years back due to the same issue of getting older and not wanting to lift those heavy kayaks. We bought Stellar Sea Kayaks, 16S and 18S. The inside looks like a honeycomb design from the layers to make them so light. Mine is about 38 pounds. We got the Advantage ones to keep the price down. It looks like they have some new options now for even lighter boats. This summer we went on two camping and kayaking trips with a friend and used her trailer. However, I am having very little trouble lifting the kayak onto our car now (6 month post surgery). Our Subaru Crosstrek is not super tall. For our truck we have hullavators.
2 Likes
I had a torn rotator cuff on two occasions and only with the second occurence did I find a physical therapist who showed me how to do exercises with rubber bands to strengthen the muscles involved. The muscles have trouble handling loads at shoulder height and above.
I replaced my paddle driven kayak with a Hobie pedal drive kayak. I could go twice as fast and hold my speed 4x as long as when paddling. The Hobie kayaks are relatively heavy and I bought a jetski trailer and used it for a time.
I sold the Hobie kayaks and the trailer and I am now planning to buy an inflatable kayak with a rudder and pedal drive. The best seem to be the ones sold by the U.S. distributor, Saturn. Under $1000 and in both fin and propeller pedal driver versions.