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.
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.
“Lighter kayak” is in contrast to -------- what?
Also how heavy and big or small are you?
SOT and fishing kayaks are called light when they weigh 70 lbs. So “lighter” then what?
Do you used a 50 pound kayak now?
A Skin on Frame is the lightest category, but light is variable there too.
The basic overarching principal is that lighter means either more delicate or shorter lived. I Skin kayak on a light frame can be made down to about 20 pounds for smaller paddlers if the frame is not built very heavy duty and if the skin is made from 220 Denier Nylon as an example. But such a kayak must be re-skinned more often then one skinned with 1000 Denier Cordura, and can’t be handled in as rough a way as one made with a stronger frame. None of that makes a lot of difference is you are 6 foot 3" tall and weigh 260 lbs
Then there is budget, Not just for the initial purchase but also for up-keep. I rotomolded kayak the class of kayak that’s heaviest, Fiber glass lighter, Kevlar lighter still and carbon fiber the lightest. However some super light carbon kayaks are a bit delicate because the amount of cloth used in the lay-up is held to a minimum in the interest of getting the end product as light as possible. No one does it, but if a carbon boat was made to be about 60 pounds it would be a LOT stronger then one made to weigh 42 pounds, but it would also cost a kings ransom. Such a kayak might give a roto-molded kaya a run for toughness, but you could likely by 5 roto-molded kayaks for the cost of 1 60 LB carbon fiber kayak.
So to get into details we need to know more about YOU. The use of the kayak and the situation you face as you move towards a new boat,.