: Does one's knees fit into knee braces or is it the knees and back up the
: thies a ways. Even though I am building a sea kayak, I have never seen
: one, or the different braces inside of one,(knee, hip, foot).

Hi John,

Like John said, fit is a personal thing. I highly recommend sitting in some commercial whitewater kayaks and see how they fit you. Most commercial sea kayaks IMHO don't have "aggressive" enough knee/thigh braces, and really don't contribute to edging that much.

Both Pete and John are definitely on the right track with the shape of their CF braces.

What's the difference between a knee hook and a thigh brace? Where it hits you. This mostly has to do with the lenght of your legs in relation to the height of the deck. With a relatively high deck, they become knee hooks. With a lower, flatter deck, they are thigh braces. I used to think a high deck was nice, especially with my long legs, but you get more control and torque with a lower deck and "thigh braces".

The more I learn, the less I know.

Anyway, another thing that isn't intuitively obvious is that the "vault" (a knee hook is the same shape as an architectural barrel vault!) runs exactly parallel to the centerline of the boat. Your legs come off the seat, splayed outward at an angle, so you'd think the length of this vault would be somewhat aligned with your leg. Nope. Don't ask me how I found that out the hard way. It even looks like the knee hooks are angled in commercial boats, but they really aren't.

WaveSport has some amazing looking knee hooks and hip pad systems in this year's boats.

So...sit in some whitewater boats (ones that have a similar hull profile at the cockpit to your sea kayak) and go for it! If you go for really deep knee hooks, you'll gain amazing control, but make sure you check with a wet exit that you can clear your legs quickly enough.

Shawn