My wife and I had the pleasure of recently kayaking on the Colorado river below the Hoover damn. We had never kayaked before, and immediately fell in love with it. Now we want our own kayaks. The problem is, my wife will need to be able to get a kayak up onto the car by herself at times. One of those 50 lb plastic jobs just isn't gonna cut it (I may even have trouble with one of those).

I am intrigued by the possibility of building a couple of the wooden kit kayaks. The Pygmy Arctic Tern 14 "looks" like it might do, and would easily fit on top of my wife's Civic.

Q1) How different is a sea kayak compared to a non sea kayak like the slow, heavy Loons we were in on our trip?

Q2) We plan on kayaking on lakes, slow streams, saltwater inlets, swamps, and the like. No whitewater, and no open ocean. I was looking at the Folbot foldables, but my impression from reading about these is that they are very slow. Am I wrong about that? If not, then would a pair of Arctic Tern 14s be right for us, or would they be too unstable for a couple of novices.

I'm 5'8", shoe size 8. My wife is 5'7", shoe size 7 1/2.

I am no where near anyplace where I can test drive various kayaks, so I've gotta use my best guess as to which ones to purchase.

TIA