My experience is that most people get into sea kayaking gradually.
My wife and I started paddling casually while on vacation. After a few years we signed up for a day paddle with Maine Sport. It was only after that we bought our own boats (poly), paddles (Aquabound) and gear.
The first couple of years of buying gear, my wife often commented how reasonable the cost seemed to be.
As we gained confidence and skill we upgraded gear and boats. It took years for us to get to the level of boats, gear, skills, and coaching we now have/experience.
Yes, we now have fabulous boats and gear. We now work regularly with BCU coaches. But, it has been an evolution that spans years.
Getting into kayaking is not expensive. Persuing sea kayaking in a dedicated manner does require some investment.
What? no float bags? I think the float bags are essential safety equipment. Even in boats with bulkheads you need then in case a hatch cover leaks. Also you need then when touring to hold the heavy stuff to the bottom and keep it from shifting. ( ever tried to roll with a shifting load?)
Also many kayakers start out without the basic backpacking tent, stove , and sleep gear.
(...since i have this conversation this 400-500 times a summer....;-) )
Newbie comes in, has paddled a sit on top or their neighbor's Pungo 120. They talk about what they want to do with the boat, advantages and disadvantages of certain materials, we get some boats down to get an idea of fit, make an appointment to go down the street and demo some boats, and they choose a poly day-touring boat in the $750-$1100 range.
For their paddle, they'll choose an AquaBound Stingray, a Werner Cascadia, or something else reasonably light weight, but not outrageously expensive, at $130-170.
They'll buy a decent quality paddlesports PFD, $50-90.
They already have a car with factory bars on it, and will buy either foam saddles designed to work with the bars or a Hullaport/Hullraiser type carrier. With straps, they'll spend $60-140.
They'll pick up a bilge pump and paddle float, $55 for the set.
I'll recommend a skirt with the understanding that they'll want to make sure they're confident of their wet-exit abilities, or that they wait until they've done a class before using. Half buy the skirt, the other either buy a mini-skirt or pass altogether because they'll be paddling smaller lakes and don't think they'll need it.
And they'll pay $75 for a class to learn how to use all the stuff correctly.
Not counting tax, they'll spend $1,100 to maybe $1,500. We'll see them back in fall to buy a sprayskrt (if they didn't the first time) and a semi-dry top, some paddling pants, and some neoprene boots. Over the summer they'll pick up a few extras like small drybags, a Platypus water pack, things like that.
Very few first time buyers buy Kevlar or glass boats, regardless of the size of their checking account. Most glass boats are sold to experienced paddlers who know exactly what they're looking for, and in a lot of cases, you can see that their boats are probably worth more than their cars, which is as it should be...;-) .
Cost of living in NJ My neighborhood, primarily 3 BR splits selling for 475K to 525K, most don’t have basements! Looking forward to selling and moving out of the area to a less pricey area (with water nearby of course). Probably won’t happen for 5-10 years though.
Cost of my current preferred gear $450 (?) self made SOF
$50 Misc. Shorts/shirt/hat
$20 Self made Greenland paddle
$60 Self made Storm paddle (Used $40 epoxy to laminate)
$120 neo akuilisaq
$15 3 year old water shoes (clearance item)
$15 QajaqUSA black hat
$40 Float bags (self made)
$20 bilge pump/$4 Sponge (neither get used)
$25 Unbottle hydration pack
$815
No warm weather gear needed, rack not usually needed. Carry cell in an aquapac I got free.
A more complete inventory - all the above plus:
$2400 QC700 (cheaper 3 years ago!)
$1200 VCP Pintail (Kim’s)
$700 Mark 1 Ski
$400 Tsunami X-1 (plus $100 or so rehab materials)
$300 Saris rack and saddles
$400 Audi rack and saddles
$325 Superior Carbon GP
$350 Superior Carbon Storm
$160 Beale GP (Kim’s)
$0 GP from Sing (Kim’s)
$325 EPIC Mid Wing Length Lock
$125 Unknown Werner (from Chuck)
$70 Waterstick Zen (eBay)
$125 Astral 300t PFD
$50 ExtraSport PFD (Kim’s)
$115 Snap Dragon Glacier Trek Skirt
$0 Kim’s Brit skirt (came with Pintail)
$40 NRS SS Paddling Jacket
$199 Submersible VHF
$299 Mapping GPS
$239 Optio WPi camera (only partly a kayak expense)
Around $8-9K (a good bit of which came from selling off earlier gear).
Then there’s the hard to calculate clothing and miscellaneous gear and repair items/supplies. Easily a few hundred. Plus a few event entries/donations a year for another couple hundred. If I add the tools acquired while building the SOF easily add a few hundred more. If I add the recent LASIK (not 100% kayaking, but it was what finally pushed me) add a few thousand more still…
I’ll stick to my running rough estimate of $10K spent - which works out to about $2K a year. That follows a curve of maybe $500 first year, $2500 second, $4500 third, $2500 4th, with less and less to spend on in year 5…
You Got Off Cheap… if you only spent a couple of hundred on tools for making the SOF. Then again, “expenditure” comes in greater number of hours.
Three tools I really valued having this time around this time and didn’t last time include bandsaw $100 (cheap Ryobi), Skil Powerplane ($75) and Japanese style handsaw ($16). These three have made a tremendous savings in time so far with the frame construction.
Too High!! Pair of dinks last year getting into kayaking, our inital outlay around $6,200 for both of us. Probably another $1,000 for additional gear over our first season. Still need wet suits, (not likely to get dry suits any time soon,) and spare paddles. We read a couple books 1st, checked out the internet, got boats on sale at demo day, went to RI to avoid taxes. You could certainly do it much more conservatively if you started out in roto-molded boats!
LOL! So viciously true That last paragraph had me rolling (floor, not water).
The most expensive part could be undoing mistakes made from rushing into the sport instead of reading up first.
That includes not only buying the superlight boat that will “fix” the slow paddling, but paying for lessons to unlearn the bad habits.
While paddling, I once was accosted by a guy in a kayak who wanted to know what kind of kayak I was in and did it track well. He blamed his poor tracking on his kayak, quoting someone else as having told him that plastic kayaks track poorly!!! The someone else was eager to sell him a composite kayak. I pointed out that my kayak was plastic also and I wasn’t having any trouble with tracking. I also said that he wasn’t going to fix the problem by buying another boat; he needed to take spend a couple of hundred on lessons (and follow up with lots of practice) instead of a couple of thousand on equipment.
At last, a realistic account That’s a more likely scenario, even though it doesn’t offer much to make fun of!
It should also be pointed out that buying expensive gear doesn’t always result in a paddling enthusiast, and buying cheaper gear doesn’t always limit the person to twice-a-year “piddling” outings.
From what I’ve seen in this admittedly paddling-limited area, the exact opposite is true.
You know though… Guys may think they look cool in a $35500 kevlar boat but the surf chics really go for the waveskis… mine gets a lot of attention … the ski, not me of course though.
Very much true! I’m in a similar situation, only worse.
For people who live in the city, we first need to get a house with space to store the boat. Now, add car to haul the boat and to get around, which we don’t need living in the city…
What price for the boat? A few grands? Even with a few more grands of accessories, that’s still just chump change!
Maybe… I would have agree 100% 3 years ago. But nothing is absolute…
Case 1:
3 years ago, my boss went with me for a Sunday bike ride in the park and decided he wants to “get into” biking. So, I gave the “usual” advice: starting out with a mid-price bike, helmet, shorts and a few accessoreis, which would run maybe a little over a grand. (he’s my boss, after all, and I assume he’s not poor) And I gave him the thumbs up on two shops that would set him up without ripping him off.
When he came back the next week, he told me he ordered a high end bike for $3500, plus some pretty high quality accessories. I thought he was over the top but I didn’t say much…
When fall came around, he went out and bought some Gore-tex cold weather gear and kept on riding through the winter. By then, I had left the company but kep in loose touch with him. (actually, he likes to let me know what he’s done with his bike) The next spring, he joined the racing club. And by the end of the season, he was on their “A” team.
All of that on his first bike, a $3500 one.
Case 2:
Another co-worker, a petite but fit woman. She did more or less what I “recommended”, spend less than a grand for her first bike. Also a year later, she ended up racing just the like my boss! Better yet, she starts winning occasionally on her first season, even on that $1000 bike. So she did the natural thing and got herself a better bike and she starts winning consistantly and upgrading faster than a ballon! Total cost of her 2 bikes over the 2 seasons? Also over $3000+!
Moral of my pass experience as “guidian”? Some people really do know what they want, they don’t need to enter slowly, especially if they can afford it in the first place.
