: In my rather limited experience with the Night Heron, it seems much
: more maneuverable than the Explorer, despite being a bit longer.
: It's by far the most maneuverable 18' boat I've ever paddled.
: With both the Night Heron and the Outer Island, you sit lower in
: the water than you do in an Explorer. One thing that's always
: put me off a bit about the way the Explorer feels is that it
: make me feel like I'm riding high, sitting ON the water, rather
: than IN it. Ultimately, it's more a matter of what one is used
: to and one's personal preferences than anything else. Short of
: building a strip version of the Explorer, I don't think you're
: going to find a strip boat that duplicates the feel. OTOH, you
: don't need to, as there are lots of equally capable designs out
: there, like the NH and OI.

Hi Brian

You are right about the sense of sitting high in the Explorer. I don't know what the current ones are like. Mine is a fairly old MV one I use for guests as it is really too small for me and I have other boats I would rather be in anyway.

Part of the problem with mine is that the seat that came with it is, in my opinion, diabolical. The guy who had it before me had tried all sorts of inserts and adjustments to improve the seat and back-band arrangement. I just removed the factory seat all together and had done with it. I just bunged in the seat pad (pictured below) and it is better, if not perfect.

I actually can't imagine why anyone would want to copy a factory design which is inevitably going to have compromise built in, in order to accommodate the biggest range of potential customers.

There are so many beautiful shapes and sizes of kayak available for us home builders, and we can tweak them to suit our unique wants. This is one of the great benefits of kayak DIY: one can have the boat that is truly custom fitted to our height, shape (round is also a shape), weight, ability, and its intended use.

Happy paddling

Et