Buying a Touring Kayak ? Does the Boat Fit You or You Fit the Boat ...

Buying a touring kayak can be as simple or as frustrating as you make it. If you already know what you want and there is a dealer nearby, you are in luck. But if you live in an area where kayaking isn?t well entrenched, there may not be much of an assortment at the local dealer or outfitters, assuming there is one. In that case, you?ll probably have to plan a trip to an area better served by retailers or attend a kayak symposium along the kind of waters you are likely to paddle. There you?ll find a great assortment of boats and gear to try on for size and test-paddle.

Before you even begin looking at kayaks or thinking seriously about sinking your hard-earned dollars into one, take the time to do a little self-assessment. Like people, not all touring kayaks are created equal.

If you are athletic and aggressive, the one who looks for high-performance bikes, skis, or computers, you will be drawn to a different kind of boat than the individual who prefers to stroll through the woods or to jog for miles along a scenic trail. If you always look to buy the best, be it clothing, furniture, or cars, and are willing to pay a premium for materials and finish, you may gravitate toward lightweight, hand-crafted Kevlar boats. But if you buy your clothes where you buy your tools and are more concerned about performance and price than appearance, you?ll find that touring kayaks, like other recreational vehicles, range from the strictly utilitarian to those designed for the extreme edges of paddling performance.

The boats shown on this page roughly represent a range in touring kayaks from the most basic to the priciest. Compact touring kayaks, starting at about $400, represent the entry level and are well suited for beginners because they are short and wide, have large cockpits, and are stable and easy to paddle. For the person who wants to fish, bird-watch, beachcomb, or simply play around, it?s the only kayak he or she may ever want or need. And if a compact-kayak paddler hankers for two-week expeditions and buys a larger-volume touring boat, the compact is still there for hassle-free fun.

The next step up is to molded plastic touring kayaks of varying lengths and widths. Most come with basic outfitting-hatches, bulkheads, deck rigging, and the like-and are priced in the range of $600 to $1,200 or so.

At the top of the heap, at least in terms of price, are composite boats, those made of fiberglass, Kevlar, or various proprietary materials. They require more handwork in construction and their finish can be beautiful, but prices range from $1,200 to $3,000 or more depending on outfitting. Don?t be misled by price, however. The best boat for you needn?t be the most expensive. Make your choice based on your priorities and the way you intend to paddle.

Kayak Design

Long, skinny kayaks are fast and tippy; short, wide-bodied kayaks are slow and stable. That?s a reasonable rule of thumb to use in beginning a discussion of kayak design. Fortunately, a few thousand years of aboriginal development, updated with new designs and materials technology, have evolved kayak designs that avoid the extremes and provide well-balanced performance.

A cruising kayak, then, is defined by function more than form. Most of us prefer a boat that will paddle easily, will be sea-kindly when the water gets rough, and is suited to our style of paddling, body sizes, and cargo requirements.

If you are looking for performance and speed, and plan to cover long distances; if you?re the kind of person who is willing to put in the time to become an efficient paddler, take a look at the skinny boats. The average touring kayak has a beam (widest point) of about 24 inches. Expect to put in 20 hours of time on the water, above and beyond just learning to paddle, for every inch less than that. On the other hand, if you expect to be an occasional weekend paddler, with perhaps a week-long jaunt once a year, you?re going to be happier paddling a wider boat.

Every kayak design has its ardent fans. Experts and theories abound. Spend some time, listen, read the literature, and you?ll come up with some ideas, too. One school of thought holds that big, wide boats with large cockpits and rudders are best because few of us possess the natural athletic ability to take full advantage of high-performance skinny boats. Others claim that a narrow, sleek boat, unhampered by a rudder or skeg, is best because the paddler will develop the skills to stay out of trouble rather than rely on the boat. A third voice says that the boat type isn?t important; paddlers must learn seamanship and sound trip planning to stay out of trouble.

Hull Shape

The truth is that kayak design and handling are more of an art than a science. Start with the cross-sectional view. A beamy (wide) kayak with a nearly flat or shallowly arched bottom at its midsection will be a very stable boat when it is floating level. However, if it is forced up on edge, there will come a point at which it abruptly decides to flop over. A round or deeply vee?d bottom is often associated with wobbly, high-performance boats. Yet if you rock that hull over on its side, it becomes more stable and buoyant, and gives you plenty of advance warning before going completely over.

Less apparent to the untrained eye is the longitudinal shape of the hull. More theories! There are three basic shapes: Symmetrical hulls, as the name implies, are widest at the cockpit and taper to the bow and stern. Swedeform boats are widest aft of the cockpit, and their proponents hold that the narrow bow cuts easily through the water. Fishform boats are widest ahead of the cockpit, with designers believing that the blunter bow punches a hole through the water that allows the rest of the boat to slip through.

Obviously, these are extremely simplified descriptions. Boats of all three shapes have been outstanding successes, with performance differences more often a function of paddling conditions and the height, weight, and paddling style of the pilot.

What are the challenges of paddling on open waters? The dominant forces acting on the kayak are wind and wind-generated waves. A kayak should move ahead efficiently (which is another way of saying that it should take little effort to put the kayak in motion and keep it moving at a relatively rapid pace) and track in a straight line. Constant corrections to keep the boat heading on course waste energy that could be used to keep the boat moving ahead and reduce the distance we can travel on a set amount of energy.

So designers lay out long hulls for touring kayaks because longer, skinnier boats are faster and track better (tracking is the boat?s ability to go in a straight line). A touring kayak hull of similar design more noticeably resists turning than a shorter hull of similar width. If you paddle a compact kayak and a longer touring kayak back to back, you will notice that the bow of the shorter boat moves off course more readily with each power stroke than the longer touring kayak.

The primary goal of kayak hull design is to reduce the adverse effects of the dominant natural force-and on the ocean that force is wind. Stretching out a basic kayak?s length to 18 feet or greater increases buoyancy to such a degree that it bobs on the very surface, where even a minor breeze sends it scooting downwind.

Adding ballast would force the boat deeper in the water and out of the wind, but moving more mass around degrades performance. A better bet is to reduce the height of the deck, leaving just enough room ahead of the cockpit for knees and enough buoyancy in the bow to provide extra lifting motion over a wave. But reducing the deck height too much in an effort to hide it from the wind makes it more vulnerable to waves and spray.

Rather than resorting to ballast to let the boat ride deeper in the water, reducing its beam (West Greenland-style kayaks often are as narrow as 21 inches) and changing its cross-section from a broad to a narrow arch or even a vee-shape reduces buoyancy. Carving away the hull shape toward the ends further reduces the amount of water displaced, but the hull needs to be more full amidships to maintain stability.

How Fast is Fast?

Other things being equal, maximum speed is directly related to waterline length. The longer the waterline, up to a point, the potentially faster the boat. At around 23 feet, the friction of the water dragging along the hull overcomes the hydrodynamic advantages of longer hull lengths.

Don?t confuse maximum speed with efficiency in moving through the water. In equally efficient hull forms, it may be easier to keep a 15-foot hull at a cruising speed of 3.5 knots than a 20-foot hull, although the longer hull could be driven to a higher speed.

It is true that boat length predicts the maximum hull speed of a displacement boat (like a kayak), and the calculus is that hull speed will reach 1.4 times the square root of the waterline length; yet the friction or hull drag created by a long boat will soon sap the strength of most recreational paddlers, so that potential speed is never reached. In fact, most recreational paddlers cruise at no more than three knots. Conclusion: hull speed is not all that important for most people.

A nonscientific survey conducted by counting noses on various kayak trips determined that most paddlers find the 16- to 17-foot single a perfectly acceptable length. Speed is adequate, the boat is maneuverable, and most importantly, it?s more portable than the theoretically swifter craft that?s three feet longer.

The bottom shape of a kayak is also a performance factor, affecting a kayak?s ability to go straight or to turn. The keel, the bottom profile of a kayak from bow to stern, is not a straight line but is shaped like the rocker in a rocking chair. Most boats will have the ends of the keel (at the bow and stern) from three to five inches higher than the middle. The middle serves as a pivot point, allowing the boat to turn. It?s a trade-off: boats that track well (go straight) are harder to turn, whereas boats that turn easily are harder to paddle in a straight line.

The design elements of the part of your kayak hull that is in the water are obviously important, but so are those above the water, as we noted before. Some decks arch or actually come to a peak like a roof forward and aft of the cockpit. They?re designed to shed water and give the paddler a drier ride.

Then there are designs (reaching their ultimate conclusion in the West Greenland style) with a peaked deck, a flaring bow, and a jutting prow. Proponents claim that this flare offers a drier ride and prevents the bow from diving into a wave, or purling. Other designers prefer a simple tapered bow, with a fine cutwater slicing into the water and leading back into a rapidly widening hull with plenty of reserve buoyancy to lift the fore end over a wave.

What Does It All Mean?

Lots of theories! Remember to do your self-assessment first. For most purposes, boats designed for recreation (let?s say day trips or overnight camping) will have hull shapes and dimensions that hover around a ?norm.? Your goal is to avoid extremes of design or dimension, unless you have a specialized need or usage that demands a significant departure from the norm. Such specialized needs might be a 250-pound or heavier paddler, a fisherman, a photographer, a racer, or an expedition paddler, or particular locations where the boat will be used, such as rivers, protected waters, the open coast, or a combination.

Sit-On-Tops

Not all kayaks have cockpits. Some you simply sit upon, with a shallow depression for your butt and a pair of small wells for your heels. Designs range from the long, sleek surf skis to broad, stubby dive platforms. A few, such as the surf skis, will have foot-operated rudders. Many are self-bailing, actually self-draining as you paddle.

Sit-on-tops are a great alternative to the traditional kayak and overcome some of the phobias associated with climbing into a cockpit. Some come with waterproof fabric flaps that can close around the paddler as a shelter from the weather. If you miscalculate and dump over, so what? Just climb back aboard and start paddling.

Single or Double?

One of the great attractions of kayak cruising is the sense of being totally responsible for your craft. It goes where you paddle, at the pace your muscles dictate. You can loll on the beach, drive for a distant point, or fly a sea anchor as a nautical brake and fish for a few hours.

That said, consider the double kayaks. They are among the most stable of human-propelled watercraft and, with their long waterline, length and two paddlers, are very fast. Speed and stability are not their major selling points, though. You can team up a strong and a weak paddler, so that no one lags far behind. Some doubles even have a third, center cockpit, perfect for a young child.

On the downside, even though most doubles can carry bulkier items (the double-burner stove some folks want at a group camp), two single kayaks can carry a larger total load than one double. And teamwork is important to achieve the best performance. Compatible partners are not always available, and Captain Bligh, of whatever gender, doesn?t do well in the confines of a double. Rent or borrow one for a long trip before you leap into a two-person boat.

Kayaks and Women

It may be hard for macho guys to accept, but women enjoy some anatomical advantages when it comes to paddling sea kayaks. More of a woman?s body weight is distributed below the waist in comparison to a man, giving her a lower center of gravity in a boat. And women may be more accepting of the fact that kayaking is an activity in which finesse wins out over brute strength. That?s why a 90-pound woman with a good ratio of strength to weight can keep pace with or outstrip most male paddlers of an equivalent level of fitness.

Because of their lower center of gravity, many women may fit comfortably into the narrower, low-volume, high- performance boats that would be too tight or tippy for taller, more top-heavy men. The narrow hull also provides an easier reach for paddles, and the greater hull efficiency can offset any strength advantage a male paddling companion might enjoy. So it turns out that women are more likely to be a natural fit for the higher-performance hulls that some larger men covet but cannot fit. That doesn?t mean that women are any less likely to choose a stable, high-volume boat as a long-distance gear hauler or a camera or bird-watching platform.

Related Articles:

How to Fish from a Kayak
Whitewater Kayaks

Source: http://www.designaculture.com/buying-a-touring-kayak-does-the-boat-fit-you-or-you-fit-the-boat/

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