: 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

Hi Et,

I suspect that one of the reasons for not taking the Explorer out is it's weight. Same problem I have with my NDK Greenlander, think they use lead based resin .

Bill H.