Actually our rec-kayak an OT Trip 10 floats like a cork when inverted with the $17 yoga ball filling the area under the bow deck around 85%. Give it a quick flip and it is pretty dry. It takes assistance to reenter, as we are not that in shape. But if you want to “pull” swim it out it is easy.
A big company like OT could mold a bow and or stern flotation bag just like a yoga ball and sell them if they wanted for rec-kayaks for not much money. Yoga balls come in lots of sizes and two shapes only. I haven’t tried a peanut shape in the stern as ours has a bulkhead but if I get the chance I will. They weigh a couple pounds and are as tough or tougher than a truck inner tube. I like them over beach balls and blow up monkeys. Plus they hold air and stay full over a wide range of temps and stay full for 20 years.
If you are going to wet exit what good would a spray skirt do at that point? I understand they will keep water out and avoid bailing. Most rec-kayakers are not buying them for those conditions or shouldn’t be.
I did a search on Amazon and it seems there are a few skirts for rec-kayaks that have long zipper fronts. It looks like they are intended to help with waves and spray. They have some kind of hoops that give it a round top to let water not pool in the opening. Maybe this is what the OP would like.
Pulling a skirt, not pulling a waterlogged kayak… You can’t always roll after capsize. I couldn’t roll my Alaw Bach ever, as it was not a good fit for me. So every time I capsized, I had to pull my skirt while upside down, exit, empty my boat, and self rescue. It wasn’t a problem for me to do, just annoying. And I was once pinned in my WW kayak in 3500 cfs. I had to pull my skirt to exit the boat. I was lucky I could. It took muscle to unpin the boat, which had to be dragged to the bank and drained - which is what you do with WW boats if you can’t roll. Finally, as has been discussed, rolling a rec kayak is a pool trick. The “skirt” you were joking about wouldn’t be able to be pulled. I was joking about the marketing of such a thing.
You’re right, when doing a wet exit the skirt is not helping you. In fact it’s impeding you from exiting, so you have to be able to take it off. Anyway sometimes stuff happens, you capsize, and you can’t roll up or be rescued. Then you gotta take the skirt off. The point of a spray skirt is never to be somehow useful during a wet exit; most people don’t go out planning to do one unless practicing.
The purpose of a spray skirt, besides keeping the cockpit dry when rolling, is to greatly reduce the chances of capsizing in the first place. Most kayaks have little freeboard and it only takes a few inches of water sloshing about in the boat to greatly reduce its stability. It doesn’t take a very big wave or wake to allow water to pour into the cockpit. Add to this that most kayaks are more stable when moving, it doesn’t help if you have to constantly stop to bail the boat out.
That’s why, in open water especially, a spray skirt is an essential part of a sea kayak, not an optional accessory.
Some day I’m going to tell you guys how much this interaction mean to my development. I just scanned a post and learned a valuable lesson about a boat that I own and sat in. It nice to have generic boats for family and friends, but you guys view fitting a boat in a systemstic way. I think more like a Rube picking shoes out of bargain bin, to see if it fits. Some of you guys give custom fit. Most of what I’ve learned come from the way certain members present the information. I’ve learned more from just observing. I guess the word is lefell of professionslism. I like your humor bud16415, might not understand, but like. Sorry for intruding.
This forum is a bit like would you like to do a trans America automobile trip in a 1980 Corvette or a 1980 Lincoln town car or a 1980 Yugo.
We have different things here made for different reasons appealing to different people and someone is always picking the one made to do this and asking about doing that, and because there is overlap we can debate it. We have a local musician that wrote a song I always liked about when he was growing up. It’s called (Ginger or Mary Ann).
I have about as much desire to put a spray skirt on our rec-boats as I do taking a barrel over Niagara Falls. Someone might want to do it and if they do good for them and they should. I put Floatation bags in the front and back of my canoe and almost every time I’m out on the water someone asks me why? or do I do WW? I tell them no WW and it is space I don’t use and if I ever flip over it makes it easy to flip back right. Then they ask do you flip over a lot and I tell them I never flip over. Then they walk away.
We all need a little humor and I’m working on yours as well.
It isn’t just the fit for the sake of it. It is because fit can matter when in conditions that go to the edge of safety. If that is not the paddling environment someone has been in, another matter entirely.
Interesting idea on the yoga ball type hull fillers. But inflatable float bags for kayaks are available – I probably have 8 or 10 of them of varying sizes (since I have long used folding kayaks with no bulkheads so they are a part of my regular kit and I need a pair for each boat). I have bags that also are usable for cargo so they do double duty. The inflatable bags are not JUST for adding buoyancy but for filling space so water can’t. So even a watertight closable bag that is full of camping gear stuffed in the stern is going to create a safer boat (as well as protecting the gear from saturation). And you can make your own custom inflatable float bags for a few bucks. Some of the instruction books for building skin on frame kayaks (Like “Building the Greenland Kayak” which always turns up on Ebay or Amazon for about $10) contain directions for that. Vinyl by the yard is available at fabric stores and Walmart and places like DIYpackraft.com sell the adhesive and valves and even heat-sealable coated nylon as is used in rafts.
I’ve been working on making long skinny flotation bladders for some vintage folding kayaks I bought to restore and resell. Project is half done but I got distracted by more urgent ones. Not a hard project. In fact there are often short seminars at the Greenland skills paddling weekends that take enrollees through making a float bag in an hour or two.
A new set of float bags can be costly but I have browsed the mark down areas of outfitters over the years and also found cheapies on Craigslist and Ebay. probably spent no more than $20 on any one I have ever bought except the storage type bags, which I think were $50 for the pair and also function as dry bags in the hatches of my hardshell boats.
I thought about making some and what I did in my canoe is put the peanut yoga balls inside waterproof bags made from non stretch fabric. Yoga balls will expand in a kayak and take the form of the hull and deck. In the canoe there is no deck so I wanted some containment. Kind of like a football with a bladder inside. Doing that lets the ball take greater pressure and show less change due to temp changes.
In the canoe I have lots of storage area still and in the rec-kayak she has the one sealed hatch and that’s more than enough for a day trip. The sealed combo bags for storage are a great idea though.
