There’s probably a really good chance it will get better if you stick with it. It’s hard to know how many hours it might take. But some frequent consistent practice will make a big difference. SeaDart’s advice of taking it into waves will make a big difference too.
I really like the Bahiya. It just has a feel to it that it sounds like you are appreciating on flat water. To me it feels sleek and just very much at one with me, edging really easily as you mention. I don’t think it has race speed, but it has super-easy glide at a fast touring pace. It really shines at keeping speed padding into wind and waves. It’s from a different generation of design philosophy. I would suggest the main goal was to design a kayak that excelled at seafaring in all of the sea’s states, versus excelling in a park and play zone with a bow so proud to fight trough submerging that it comparatively feels like pushing a plow. There was a time when to see people edging and maneuvering sea kayaks well was awe-inspiring. For me, that was a fun challenge. I still love to paddle a fast, more hard-tracking kayak through twisty salt marsh creeks where deep edges and well-executed and solidly planted maneuvering strokes require you to feel the effort, but if done well, allow you to glide right through all the twists and turns. Some people get frustrated by it. I feel motivated by it and get a real feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction from it. And the Bahiya just has a really satisfying feeling for this.
I think the P&H Sirius fell within the same general design philosophy, and held solid popularity for a good number of years. I remember feeling what you’re feeling with my Sirius when I bought it. It was hard to imagine that I could ever just be comfortable in it. Just small little waves and I would feel that twitch. I had read and heard a lot of people comment that it felt more secure as the waves got bigger. My experience is that these small little wavelets would make me feel that twitch, and I would have the nervous reaction that you describe. I knew, I just knew intuitively, that if small waves felt twitchy, a bit bigger waves would feel twitchier, and big waves would feel out of control. But that wasn’t the case. I felt all the twitch I was ever going to feel with the small waves, and as waves got bigger, there was no increase in twitchiness. With a little time and less of my own uneasiness, the twitchiness was gone. And I think this is where SeaDart’s advice comes in. Get out and feel how waves actually act on your hull, and when you discover how the kayak actually reacts to pushy waves, you’ll be able to relax in conditions that were causing trepidation and twitchiness.
When I got my Bahiya, I had already gone through this with the Sirius, and it felt comfortable for me right away. There is just a little more width in the seat in the Bahiya than the Sirius, and I appreciated this, and it’s one of those kayaks that was perfectly comfortable for me as it came. It’s got a touch more secondary stability than the Sirius. But they are the same 20 1/2" wide specification-wise. The Bahiya is faster than the Sirius, and although I enjoy them both, the Bahiya just holds a special place for me. I have several sea kayaks to choose from, but I even declared one summer the Summer of Bahiya, as I realized halfway through that I was loading up the Bahiya so much more than any of my other sea kayaks, and enjoying seeing what I could do with it in surf and rough water seafaring.
I’ve most recently gone through this type of adjustment with an Epic V10 surfski. But having gone through it before, I was confident that it was possible, and this seems to make a big difference. The muscles in my core that engage for balance needed to tighten up some. The edging that I both do and just allow without noticing in the Bahiya is too relaxed for the V10. After committing good time in the V10, I then realized that I had tightened up and needed to relax more in my sea kayaks, as I wasn’t engaging my edges in rough water as much. It turns out just realizing it was all I really needed to get back to dipping my edges deeper in my sea kayak.
I think I had a similar breakthrough in my V10 to what I had back when I bought my Sirius. There seemed to be a leap. I’m out and focusing on my forward stroke, making sure I’m feeling that pull, and working to ignore that little twitch in the boat so that it doesn’t trigger a corresponding twitch or tensing in my body. The twitch is there, it’s there, I’m hesitating here and there, it’s still there…and then one day I’m paddling and I notice that this tiny little twitch is happening to my boat, but I’m not reacting. I’m comfortably settled through it all. The core is now tightened up and providing unconscious micro-reactions, and there’s no need to even think about bracing.
A little stubbornness here will yield a great deal of satisfaction, and frankly, a nice jump in overall paddling skill level. It’s one of those where if you can see your way through it and continue paddling, I highly recommend it. If it keeps you off the water, not so much.
I had a solid roll when I bought the Sirius and Bahiya. It took me 4 two-hour sessions to develop a solid roll on both sides that has worked in all of my kayaks - whitewater and sea. And I find the Bahiya rolls easily. For me, it took much more time than that on the water for the twitchiness to disappear in the Sirius. But if you can capsize and scramble back into the Bahiya, I think that is much more challenging than staying upright, and much more challenging than rolling. You’ve probably got a good foundation for working through it.
