Interesting thread a ways down the page talking about day hatches, leaky bulkheads etc on the Tsunami kayaks from Wildy...
Thuoght I'd post a comment about their Duralite plastic....makes for a very light kayak but at the loss of strength. I recently saw several Duralites...Pungo's and Tsunami's...at a dealer that were being sent back to Wildy to be destroyed....VERY weak plastic...cockpit thighbraces near the point of breaking...holes throughout the combing and so wek you could squeeze the rim between your thumb and finger and collapse the plastic of the combing. Watch out for that Duralite as it does not hold up.
Yeah People have told me that Duralite is too flopy. someone said it floped and was too thin . Gen2 is better. My Pamlico 140 is Gen2 polyethelene. Gen2 is a nice stiff durable type of plastic. I find my kayak to be tough and quite rigid. It’s a nice meterial.
Good move Good move Pamlico in getting the tougher plastic. Some people get lured in by the kighter weight of the Duralite stuff…but it just isn’t tough enough!
Yup Didn’t surprize me with this one. i’ve demod a duralite Tsunami at a demo day, and it was a complete piece of shit with paper thin deck that was about as flexible as a deflated bicycle tube and it wasn’t even hot out. and it was already deformed around bulkheads and what not.
Versus Dagger’s Airalite I have the 15.5’ Dagger Specter and the Airalite (which I suppose is very similar) has held up pretty well with one exception… the plastic that extends into the cockpit from the coaming to form the seat… has cracked.
Doesn’t affect anything, but it’s still irritating.
not the same Dagger and Perception’s “Airlite” is ABS plastic (as is Current Designs’ TCS, and Hurricane’s material, etc, etc). The inherent stiffness and reduced weight of ABS are several steps above poly.
WS Duralite is just a slightly different way of doing a standard poly construction, with a thinner wall and additional reinforcing inside the hull to help make up for the reduced stiffness of the skin.
Repairable If the Airlite stuff is ABS, then that would make it possible to reliably fix them. Thats something you can’t say about 95% of the poly kayaks out there!
Correct As for the duralite…it is pretty much garbage from the start. Not that I expect much better from confluence at this point the way they are going.
