To me , comparing the 140 to the Disco, the 140 is like a stock race car and the Disco is a sports car. My friend’s Disco can certainly pace my Tarpon 160.
@currion said:
The idea that all sit on tops are the same, with the same characteristics is astounding. Open decked sea kayaks exist. This. https://www.mirageseakayaks.com.au/mirage-583-adventure
Now that looks like a very cool boat that I would love to try out, although $4k is a bit out of my boat budget!
@Sincress
You have been offered a pretty good debate above about various takes on SOTs.
But l just scrolled thru all of this and hit your comment about not wanting a wet butt. IMO unless you invest in drywear your posterior will experience some wetness. I don’t care whether you are in a SOT or a SINK. By the time you actually get into or onto the boat some amount of water has come with you. The only people l know of who can avoid that are those who paddle with a partner kind enough to pull them into the water after they have boarded from a dry end of the kayak.
I personally wouldn’t have the guff to ask anyone to do that for me even if others were around. Like you would be, l paddle solo. Wetness ensues somewhere in the process of getting on the water.
@Celia said:
@Sincress
You have been offered a pretty good debate above about various takes on SOTs.But l just scrolled thru all of this and hit your comment about not wanting a wet butt. IMO unless you invest in drywear your posterior will experience some wetness. I don’t care whether you are in a SOT or a SINK. By the time you actually get into or onto the boat some amount of water has come with you. The only people l know of who can avoid that are those who paddle with a partner kind enough to pull them into the water after they have boarded from a dry end of the kayak.
I personally wouldn’t have the guff to ask anyone to do that for me even if others were around. Like you would be, l paddle solo. Wetness ensues somewhere in the process of getting on the water.
Well, In the previous 8 months I’ve successfully prevented my butt from getting wet on most of my 57 journeys. Both of my inflatables have raised seats so no water gets anywhere near, unless you enter the kayak wet. And if you let your legs dry out on the foredeck for a few minutes, you can even not get any water on the floor. Wow. Is it really such a tall order?
@Sincress said:
Well, In the previous 8 months I’ve successfully prevented my butt from getting wet on most of my 57 journeys. Both of my inflatables have raised seats so no water gets anywhere near, unless you enter the kayak wet. And if you let your legs dry out on the foredeck for a few minutes, you can even not get any water on the floor. Wow. Is it really such a tall order?
No wet butt = NO FUN!
If you are ever in San Diego, I’ll take you out for a little adventure. Your butt won’t stay dry 15 seconds.
Honestly Kayaking is a water sport. You might as well stay home drinking beer in front of the TV if yo are not getting wet.
@SeaDart said:
No wet butt = NO FUN!
If you are ever in San Diego, I’ll take you out for a little adventure. Your butt won’t stay dry 15 seconds.Honestly Kayaking is a water sport. You might as well stay home drinking beer in front of the TV if yo are not getting wet.
To each his own - but I prefer swimming and diving if I wish to be wet!
Thanks for the offer, but I doubt I’ll be visiting San Diego soon, I’m literally on the opposite side of Earth 
If you are staying dry you are not in the conditions many of us find more fun. Each to their own but…
@Sincress – The people who make this say it’s dry … they might be right; it’s pretty high above the water …
There’s a definite advantage here (to my mind) in being able to easily change position for comfort. That’s one of the main reasons I pull over and get out: to walk around. Though I’d have to put a cushion on that lengthwise saddle. I don’t like the protruding shapes on the seat of the W700. My luck, some tender part of me would be bumping or scraping those just about the time I found the fore-aft sweet spot for trim.
I’m pretty sure it would be fast, too, even the W500 model. Reason for that is that I designed something like it: a 10 foot pontoon boat to fit in my pickup. Mine had watertight pontoons and was a lot wider, but I built a one-quarter-scale model of it and bathtub tested it. My scaled-down person-weight could be placed on the far end of a pontoon and the thing stayed reasonably flat, and I was using pretty similar dimensions and shape. I think mine were a little fuller in the ends.
If this does manage to get knocked over, it’s pretty likely that only one side of it will take on water. You could still climb aboard, and if you have a bilge pump, you’re all good.
Yeah, wind is going to work on it, but they make the point that you can shift your weight fore and aft and trim the boat to self-correct.
You need a loooong paddle–don’t worry, they’ll sell you one. Lot of spendy here.
Can you turn it? Who cares? It’s double-ended. Just swing your legs over and reverse course.
But get this: the W700 model, under a 200 lb load (that’s more than I weigh), draws two and a half inches of water. And you can stand with both feet on the same side and it only heels a little bit.
I’ll be looking for some kind of bad review on these, but haven’t found one yet.
You can name it “TallYak”.
@Celia said:
If you are staying dry you are not in the conditions many of us find more fun. Each to their own but…
Yes, you’re completely correct. I paddle when the conditions are perfect or at least nice. As I said we don’t have ‘surf’ or ocean swells here so the only time you get waves is when there’s a storm, and I don’t want to be anywhere near the sea then. But of course, to each his own, I can understand why surfing and rock pools are attractive to some people.
@greyheron thanks for the suggestion, it’s an interesting boat, but that’s not a kayak. It’s a narrow dinghy which you can paddle, not exactly my thing. I have a 1 meter wide inflatable kayak (see Decathlon’s Itiwit brand) and it borders on too wide to paddle. It’s completely unflippable in calm conditions, however, and I can swivel around on my butt and lay down in the bow very comfortably. That’s something most other kayaks can’t do, even the most expensive SOTs!
.
You know here in Florida during the summer we get wet butt from sweat more than from water. To each their own fun. If you want to sit in a yard chair on your boat, go right ahead.
@Sincress said:
snip
@greyheron thanks for the suggestion, it’s an interesting boat, but that’s not a kayak. It’s a narrow dinghy which you can paddle, not exactly my thing. I have a 1 meter wide inflatable kayak (see Decathlon’s Itiwit brand) and it borders on too wide to paddle. It’s completely unflippable in calm conditions, however, and I can swivel around on my butt and lay down in the bow very comfortably. That’s something most other kayaks can’t do, even the most expensive SOTs!
As to defining what a kayak is, I’m willing to settle for “a boat propelled with a double-bladed paddle.” The term has been smeared and stretched almost beyond recognition. In real-world terms, a kayak is what the manufacturer calls it on their Statement of Origin when you go to register it. The Wavewalk S4, to me, is a powerboat, plain and simple; it just doesn’t come equipped from the factory with a motor. Some people are calling it a ‘micro-skiff’.
I have an inflatable; a Sevylor Tahiti Classic, and I can relate about its stability and comfort. Just don’t count on it going in a straight line.
@greyheron I’d call that a skiff as well. Inflatables don’t track well compared to rigid boats but I dont mind that actually, a small correction gets you back on course
@Sincress said:
@greyheron I’d call that a skiff as well. Inflatables don’t track well compared to rigid boats but I dont mind that actually, a small correction gets you back on course
Haha! Small correction … the Tahiti has a peculiar habit … I’d be paddling along in a decently straight line, and then the boat would suddenly decide it didn’t like that course and would begin to make a hard turn, and the only way to get it to quit is to bring it to a full stop. I made a kind of soft skeg for it, but that was a waste of effort. Nowadays they’re putting little hard plastic skegs on inflatables, and that’s got to be better for tracking.
@greyheron said:
@Sincress said:
@greyheron I’d call that a skiff as well. Inflatables don’t track well compared to rigid boats but I dont mind that actually, a small correction gets you back on courseHaha! Small correction … the Tahiti has a peculiar habit … I’d be paddling along in a decently straight line, and then the boat would suddenly decide it didn’t like that course and would begin to make a hard turn, and the only way to get it to quit is to bring it to a full stop. I made a kind of soft skeg for it, but that was a waste of effort. Nowadays they’re putting little hard plastic skegs on inflatables, and that’s got to be better for tracking.
Oh wow. That sounds awful, when you said “don’t track well” I thought you meant the side to side swinging of the bow between paddle strokes.
Both my inflatables have plastic skegs (Itiwit actually has three haha) and they’re a must have for every time you get on the water. With those you can get a pretty steady course, they actually handle very nicely.
I just did a 12.3km trip and set my speed record with the Gumotex Swing 1, I actually averaged 6.1 km/h!
Being an open boater and primarily a river paddler, I know little about kayaks of any kind, but I have a sea kayaking friend who pretty much paddles SOT’s exclusively. His go-to boat is a 14’ or 15’ Tsunami - not the Wilderness Systems Tsunami, but the composite sea kayak out of CA favored by the Tsunami Rangers. Here is the boat:
If I could find one of those around here, I might become a sea kayaker. I did go out with him this summer and I borrowed his 17’ Heritage SOT:
We did a 14-mile trip on the West Passage of Narraganset Bay including some 3’ to 4’ rollers around Beavertail at the southern tip of Jamestown. It was a hoot! Not sure that I could get back in that boat alone in those conditions, but it was fast, comfortable and stable.
Two summers ago I paddled with Tony in his 20’ Tsunami tandem SOT. We were rock-gardening off the southern coast of Jamestown. At about 00.50 you can see Tony and I getting stuck in a hole as the waves receded - rookie move, but I’m a rookie.
Again, not an experienced kayaker, but if I was looking for a sea kayak, it would be a SOT like these.
@eckilson that’s some great insight and an interesting video. As for myself, I’d stay far, far away from those rocks with those kind of waves!
@eckilson said:
If I could find one of those around here, I might become a sea kayaker. I did go out with him this summer and I borrowed his 17’ Heritage SOT:
We did a 14-mile trip on the West Passage of Narraganset Bay including some 3’ to 4’ rollers around Beavertail at the southern tip of Jamestown. It was a hoot! Not sure that I could get back in that boat alone in those conditions, but it was fast, comfortable and stable.
Two summers ago I paddled with Tony in his 20’ Tsunami tandem SOT. We were rock-gardening off the southern coast of Jamestown. At about 00.50 you can see Tony and I getting stuck in a hole as the waves receded - rookie move, but I’m a rookie.
Again, not an experienced kayaker, but if I was looking for a sea kayak, it would be a SOT like these.
Now that looks like a cool fun boat that I would love to try out.
Certainly some different strategy packing and looking at the weather with that boat.
The hull looks pretty much like a regular sea kayak. Can you lean that thing for a turn?
@SharpsRifle said:
Now that looks like a cool fun boat that I would love to try out.
Certainly some different strategy packing and looking at the weather with that boat.
The hull looks pretty much like a regular sea kayak. Can you lean that thing for a turn?
I could heal it over a little, but it was tough to turn. It was great going straight ahead, which is what you usually do on the ocean anyway right?
@eckilson said:
Being an open boater and primarily a river paddler, I know little about kayaks of any kind, but I have a sea kayaking friend who pretty much paddles SOT’s exclusively. His go-to boat is a 14’ or 15’ Tsunami - not the Wilderness Systems Tsunami, but the composite sea kayak out of CA favored by the Tsunami Rangers. Here is the boat:
If I could find one of those around here, I might become a sea kayaker. I did go out with him this summer and I borrowed his 17’ Heritage SOT:
We did a 14-mile trip on the West Passage of Narraganset Bay including some 3’ to 4’ rollers around Beavertail at the southern tip of Jamestown. It was a hoot! Not sure that I could get back in that boat alone in those conditions, but it was fast, comfortable and stable.
Two summers ago I paddled with Tony in his 20’ Tsunami tandem SOT. We were rock-gardening off the southern coast of Jamestown. At about 00.50 you can see Tony and I getting stuck in a hole as the waves receded - rookie move, but I’m a rookie.
Again, not an experienced kayaker, but if I was looking for a sea kayak, it would be a SOT like these.
I used to surf quite a bit with “Tsunami” Tony. Glad he is still out playing. Need to catch up with him at some point.
As far as the whole SOT vs SINK comparison/debate, it never ends… To each their own (bias). Me, I like both. Recently, I been really infatuated with my pedal kayak - a Hobie Revo. Can’t beat it for what it’s intended. Horse for the course.
sing
@sing said:
As far as the whole SOT vs SINK comparison/debate, it never ends… To each their own (bias). Me, I like both. Recently, I been really infatuated with my pedal kayak - a Hobie Revo. Can’t beat it for what it’s intended. Horse for the course.sing
Peddle kayak? Sorry Sing, that just seems wrong! 