I have done a lot of kayaking with a good friend of mine who owns a kayak made by a highly reputable manufacturer. This boat is an all fiberglass construction, and the design and layout of the features is good. However, I have had an opportunity to take a good look at this yak and come to the conclusion that what we are doing with wood/epoxy/fiberglass is head and shoulders better than this.

My friend’s yak developed some cracks and softness in the glass near the cockpit at about where the paddler’s knees would be. It was most likely due to pressure/vibration from the J-rack during transport. This boat has been on a J-rack only when on my car, as my friend has a different roof top system. My strippers have been transported with this J-rack system many more miles (10X?) than this all glass yak and have no evidence of transport damage in this location. I never gave this any thought during construction of my boats.

I wanted to repair my friends boat, and had a chance to look carefully at the construction/layout and found it to be competent but with little to no thought to minimizing weight. All of the many fasteners are stainless steel into reinforced fiberglass/resin receptacles. Furthermore when it came time to reinstall one of the screws that I removed during the repair the threads were stripped. This was an easy repair to make with epoxy, however there is no possible way this would have happened with a Maroske fitting. The hatch covers are heavy rubber. Interestingly the manufacture lists the weight of the craft at “approximately” 50 lbs.” without hatch covers.” I cannot imagine trying to paddle a kayak without the hatch covers in place, so I weighed the boat with the covers and it weighed 60 lbs.! When I weighed the hatch covers they weighed in at 1.98 Kg (4 lb. 5 oz.). In other words the boat weighs “approximately” 5 lb. 11 oz. (ie. 10%) more than their literature states, and 16% more, once it is in a useable condition.

The last two kayaks I have finished, are longer than this boat and weigh in at an average of 34 lbs with hatch covers, have Maroske fittings, expedition layers, don’t crack up when mounted on J-racks, and look better. Materials cost was ¼ that of the MSRP of this boat.

Yah, we da bomb.