More Photos Below!Gallery
I’ve made mention here before of the two sea kayaks that I’m privileged to paddle, but there aren’t many clear pics of them, not of the Woody, at any rate. So here’s a few pics showing what’s up.
A few years ago friend Karl Pearson moved up north and lightened his load by selling a few of his boats. I got the wood-strip knock-off of the Seda Glider that he built. And friend Tim Feldkamp got the yellow Valley Pintail.
These are both really high-end kayaks but they’re extremely different. It’s almost comical.
WOOD STRIP “SEDA GLIDER”
The Log Glider is superfast at 19 feet long and 20″ wide. (The real Glider is 21″.) The Glider is considered one of the fastest racing sea kayaks. It has no rocker. In sea kayaking you want to watch out for storms and waves that get too big to handle. The way the Glider gives you safety is that it lets you GET OUTTA DODGE before the weather does. It’s an interesting theory but it works. You can really go places in this boat. It can also haul a huge amount of stuff. But I’m not a real stuff buff. I like going light. I feel bogged down otherwise and just hate hoisting heavy boats. “Real” sea kayak loads apparently require two to carry. Or, I guess you load up while in the water. (Not always handy on a wavy beach.) 20 pounds of stuff is about it for me. Because it’s fully-equipped, it’s quite heavy, bot for a tripping boat, but for my kind of weekender and speedster. It’s neat to have all the expedition bells’n’whistles…until I try to carry it from car to water…which is what I do all the time with it…but I’ve never done a big trip. Oh well! This boat handles waves fine, but it IS big and puts a fair bit of mass up into the breeze to get blown around, though it tracks like a freighter. Really, it’s probably a rough ride in steep stuff. It’s been fine for me in moderate waves but I’ve felt butterflies just thinking of doing a crossing in it in rolling whitecaps. Not that I was going to try. I was going to go the next day, anyway—and when I went it was much mellower—and I blew through a 5-mile crossing like I was water-skiing. This boat isn’t so easy to roll, because it’s so round. The rear deck is kinda high for laying back and getting your weight low. But I can do it. You just gotta commit. And not inhale until you’re back upright and paddling. If I had a few solid months in it, though, I bet I’d be darn bombproof. This boat offers a good approach to the sea situation, it’s just the Euro one. With a few months of paddle practice, it’s not likely that I’d ever need to roll. It’s vital to be ready for trouble, but in reality it’s amazing the kind of wind and water a fit energetic paddler can claw their way through. It’s rather natural, after all, to stay upright in these boats.
VALLEY PINTAIL
The Valley Pintail is a British boat in the Greenland style. It has a ton of rocker and low decks, so it just loves HUGE waves and wind. It’s like a duck out there. It can even travel fast in storms while other boats would struggle with some desperation. It makes you grin all over in such water. It rolls like a champ. It makes you want to roll as much as paddle. But in calm water it’s as slow as a tupperware barge. It’s also heavy, with an expedition layup and outfitting making its 17 feet and 22″ of width maybe even heavier than the Log Boat. I once took it on a hard-blowing 3-mile passage and it handled great but sure took awhile to make the crossing.
It’s great fun having these superstar serious boats. But I kinda wish for a boat that was fast, light AND could readily handle windy, whitecap waves. I suspect there are quite a few models out there that offer nice compromises. Ah, compromise…
The bottom of the Log Boat, showing its fine entry lines with nifty flare to help it rise over the waves (not a feature of the production boat).
Looking at both boats from their sterns.
Two very different sea kayaks. The yellow boat is only 2 feet shorter but this wide angle view makes the contrast stand out. When you paddle them, the differences DO seem this big.
