Let me trow in my 2 cents worth on tandems!!

My wife has MS and while she is still very mobile and such, she finds it physically taxing to paddle fro any length of time or in any windy/wavy conditions. She loves to paddle, nonetheless, so I floated (pun intended) the idea of buying a tandem. We decided to give it a go and in July 2012 we contacted a local builder and put in our order. We both paddle Greenland paddles and we were not interested in camping, so I asked the builder to drop the deck by 1" - which he did with no problem and with not extra cost. Exactly one month later we made the 4 hour drive to pick up our new boat. We are very pleased with it!!

We have paddled it a number of times and find it to be far from something that will drive a wedge between us - quite the contrary, actually, as it gets both of us out on the water more and for longer paddles!! The lower sheers really makes the boat feel less "tendem-ish. The boat, itself, is beautiful looking craft. It has a lovely sheerline. The cockpits are a pretty standard size for a single seakayak, so they are not big and sloppy!! It weights about 80lbs but I have a cart and small roller that helps get the boat on the car single-handed!! On the water, this is a very fast boat. With two good paddlers, it flies. Even with one strong paddler and one weaker, there is no trouble keeping up with the faster paddlers in a group! I've rolled it by myself with no problem. A buddy and I took it out one evening for some rolling and rescues and we had a blast. Synced rolling was really easy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDtqFzmbuDE

My wife and I have no issues with paddling. I think my wife trusts me in what I know that we and the boat can/cannot or should/should not do!! I've taken her in around the rocks with no fighting afterwards. Likewise in wind/wave. The only time we had the slightest disagreement was over an encounter with a whale. I've been around whales in my kayaks a number of times and usually try to follow them to get closer. But my wife does not have this experience so when we had one surface about 30 feet away, she got spooked. We were a few kilometers offshore and I can understand her fear. Grudgingly, we headed back to shore.

We've had a lot of positive experiences with our double. I've been using it to teach my wife some paddling skills and boat control. For example, the sculling brace. You out our tandem on it's side pretty easy and apply a sculling brace to keep it there. This is a skill that my wife had not worked on before but having me in the boat and helping is teaching her how to do it. We have also been working on our edging a lot too as this boat responds pretty good to edging.

I guess what I'm saying is that tandems/doubles are often given a bad rap - a lot of times undeservedly! People paddle canoes (fore and aft paddlers) but no one ever sees an issue with that. How come canoes aren't called "divorce boats"? My rationale is, if it gets you on the water, then go for it. Or in my case, if it gets my wife out on the water MORE, then go for it!!

Cheers,

Sean