Hi Gelu

It is nice to see more Europeans on the forum.

The same thought used to cross my mind in the sense of "will this boat keep up with a bunch of fit paddlers in production boats."

After going out in groups a few times it was apparent that there was as much variation between the various production models as there was with my boats, and that the paddlers' fitness and abilities played a far greater role than that of the boat.

I currently have eight boats. All different designs. Seven are home made and one is a nice production fibreglass Explorer which I picked up along the way. Of all the boats, except for one which is a thin racing kayak, the explorer gets the least use. There are reasons of sentiment that contribute to this to some degree, but if the Explorer were any better than the other boats it would get more use.

There is nothing wrong with the Explorer, but equally, or perhaps even more equally, there is nothing wrong with the home made boats either. Certainly, the finish and tolerances on my home builds are to a higher standard, and they look fancier.

In addition, one is able to customise things such as foot room, sheer heights fore and aft, cockpit size, deck layout, seat construction, etc etc, to one's personal taste.

It would, I suspect, be harder to compare SOFs to hard-shells objectively.

In the end though, if home building is not a particular passion, I would say that, for generally hacking about on the water, production or home made, used or new, makes little difference as long as it is an established and well known design.

All reviews are going to be somewhat skewed by the testers personal abilities and preferences.

Etienne