I want to get a spray skirt for my Necky Manitou 13 and am looking for advice. I’m a realatively new kayaker and my kayaking mode will be touring/recreation, no whitewater. Waterways will be small inland lakes, lagoons, streams and rivers. Rolling will be something done only occasionally, for emergency puposes only or to cool off. I think nylon is the way I want to go but I’ve been told I want it to include an implosion bar. FYI, cockpit size is 2.2, my size is 5’8", 145 lbs, 30" waist. Advice?
Neo deck
In my experience, nylon skirts don’t seal well enough to the cockpit coaming do do a good job keeping water out if you’re rolling or edging aggressively. A good compromise for you might be a neoprene deck with a fabric tunnel – you could keep the tunnel loose until you anticipated rolling, but you’d still have a good deck seal for edging & leans.
Follow up to above
Angstrom’s right. For your size cockpit fabric tunnels without support are going to have diffiuclty. Best one in fabric would probably be the Immersion Research Tortuga as that one’s front deck is foam reinforced. Otherwise the IR Excursion is excellent.
See you on the water,
Marshall
www.the-river-connection.com
Hyde Park, NY
Yep
Neo deck, nylon pools water. Nylon is better than nothing but not by much.
Ditto
I’ve got both and the neo is WAY better. I haven’t paddled with the neo in summer yet, but haven’t noticed the nylon being appreciably cooler unless you count the water that has drained through and soaked the front of my pants.
Nylon skirt
I had one to use on a Manitou Sport a couple summers ago. It had the adjustable draw string. Even being tight as I could get it, it leaked around the sides quite a lot. After 2 or 3 rolls I had to stop and empty the boat. Neo’s a lot better, and I didn’t find it to be any hotter to use on a hot day.
IR skirts all the way!!!
i have a bunch of skirts (yep-Kilts too 
)and 90% of them are IR skirts…
love em…fit me better than any other…and fit the boats Great!
r
go neo
I just bought a Snapdragon neo skirt for my rec boat b/c I hated the nylon one I had for the rec boat and loved the neo one I bought used with my whitewater boat. The nylon just isn’t waterproof. Water pools, then drips through. IMHO, no skirt is better than a nylon skirt. After water drips through the nylon, it turns into water vapor b/c of your body heat, then condenses on you boat, then rains off the underside of your deck back onto you…lather, rinse, repeat. I have never found the neo to be hotter than the nylon. If it is hot out, any skirt will be hot.
The only thing I will use the nylon skirt for is when my rec boat becomes my loaner boat because it has a bright orange plastic handle for newbie/novice wet exits and I would rather my newbie/novice friends and family be wet than dead.
Go Neo
CSL, Which Snapdragon did you get? FYI, I have a Necky Manitou 13, which is a plastic touring craft. I won’t be using it for whitewater and I won’t be doing lots of rolling but I do understand that it sounds like at least a neo deck is the way to go.