Kayaking

This is the follow-up of this video:

I like to sneak up on the ducks and the geese when the lake is quiet. Sometimes I get pretty close.

Unfortunately, I can't share higher resolution 360° videos because of WebGL limitations in most browsers, so the ducks aren't very visible. But they quack real good 🙂

Trying my kayak's new side camera mount on our lake this morning at 5am. I love those still, windless days that turn the lake into a mirror. It's so quiet and peaceful.

Now if only I could find what the hell is creaking in my seat... 🙂

EDIT: I found out what’s creaking: it turns out corduroy rubbing on steel tubing is really noisy. I installed pieces of terrycloth between the seat’s fabric and the frame, and now it’s dead quiet.

I have a Wilderness Systems Recon 120 HD fishing kayak. I've never fished from a kayak (yet 🙂): I bought it mostly to do 360° nature photography. So I know next to nothing about fishing kayak gear.

My kayak came with two side rails to mount accessories. From what I could read, there isn't really a proper standard for those rails. Mine have the following dimensions:

I found 7mm rails for sale on Alibaba. So at least some kayaks use rails that are different from mine.

I looked around on the internet for camera mounts that would be compatible with my rails. I found a few manufacturers (Yakattack, Yakgadget, Cajo...) and none of them seem to indicate what kayaks their products are compatible with - implying that they universally mount on any kind of rails.

My questions are these:

• Are those rails standardized - formally or de-facto? What are the standards?
• Do the accessory manufacturers supply different bolts, or adapter plates, so their products can be mounted on all kayaks?

In the end though I ended up making my own camera mount. 360° cameras have special requirements for their mounts anyway, so mine will work better than anything on the market. And It's trivially easy to modify a 12mm hex head bolt in the lathe to make the head thinner and put a 3/8-16 UNC photo tripod thread on it instead. It costs nothing, and more importantly, I'll have it tomorrow when I go out on the water instead of waiting 2 weeks for a commercial product to arrive.

This is what my homebrew camera mount looks like:

Our small lake discharges into a very shallow and narrow stream. Our old rowboat simply can't get there. But the new kayak has a very low draft and it can enter the stream - although I do have to retract the prop and the rudder, and use regular kayak paddles. People rarely go there, so it's a bit wild.

Then I went check out the fish ladder at the other end of the lake, but it's been fenced off for some reason. Too many people fished there maybe.

The new kayak has arrived.

A handheld Garmin GPS that didn't even have maps, a portable XM radio receiver, and a 12mp Olympus pocket camera (probably 5mp for video).

Me and two others completed this trip today, with slightly rougher conditions than I anticipated, but nonetheless a successful trip.

One of the cool things about this paddle is it's just under 20km on the water, but only two km to get back to the start point to retrieve your vehicle

This is usually interesting but ugly. I don't know why the locks are open today, but its cool.

Most people think canoeing is an old thrown away tired hobby, so does this River Cowboy.

(I am kidding about bashing canoes, my Wenonahs are the most meaningful works of art to me I own!)

A blast from the past. Some of the finest flat water kayaking you will find.

Back again ...

In french, we call this kind of start where you jump in the river "embarquement à l'américaine"... I wonder how you call this in english ?

Water used to power Oregon infrastructure. I love the ruins.

I clear this pathway every year.

This time of year I kayak up all the little streams and hit spots that will soon become inaccessible. Forest Grove, Oregon

Can't wait to get back on the water. This spring (Ontafio) just seems to be dragging on though...

me, my son and my dad on the Buffalo River last summer. It was his first time in his own kayak.

Following up from my earlier query, my Tucktec 2025 Pro folding kayak arrived at the tail end of October, which is just about within the window when I expected it. When placing the pre-order in late July ($273 shipped), they said it would not ship for at least 60 days, so 90-ish days later was indeed correct on their part. The currently listed price (December 2024) appears to be at least $430 after shipping.

It arrived in a single large cardboard carton, easily brought indoors. Inside, I found the bright-yellow kayak already folded up. Opening it out, the various parts were: the kayak itself, the brief instruction manual, the seat, the seat's support struts, the skeg, and the Velcro belt used to hold the kayak in its folded state.

When I say the instruction manual is brief, I mean that it basically said to go to the website and watch the assembly and folding video. No actual procedure is given in the printed manual, which is a minor annoyance. It should also be noted -- and I knew this when ordering, but it's worth mentioning for other folks -- that this kayak does not come with a paddle. So this is definitely not any sort of turnkey kayaking product, and it never claimed to be.

The seat itself is made from foam with similar consistency to packaging material -- not a bad thing -- and backed by the same plastic sheet as the main kayak body. The support struts are actual Schedule plastic piping, the same sort used for plumbing. When assembling, the seat is very easy to attach/detach, although I do find attaching the struts to the kayak to be rather cumbersome. Essentially, you have to bend away a plastic hole to let the strut slide in. The exact procedure in the video seems to be the only way to make this work.

As for building up the kayak body, the metal latches (aluminum?) on this model make this a breeze. That said, of the four latches surrounding the cockpit, the two forward latches seem to be inopportunely placed where they might interfere with the paddle stroke. But maybe that's a matter of paddle technique.

Lastly, the skeg has a fairly simple design, such that it slots into one of the existing folds when building up the kayak body, and will pivot up if it hits an underwater obstruction. There is no user-operated retraction feature. The video says that only the Pro model has the skeg, suggesting the skeg is optional. But having taken this kayak out onto the local reservoir without the skeg, I had a difficult time keeping it tracking straight. I suspect the skeg may be functionally required for reasonable performance.

I will note that I have no kayaking experience to reference, apart from briefly paddling around in other people's kayaks during camping trips on calm water. However, I did review REI's comprehensive articles and did invest in a PFD before going out. My choice of paddle was partially based on it splitting in two and sliding within the folded kayak bundle, and that worked as expected.

As for transporting the kayak in its folded state, I believe the hype is warranted, as it will fit into the width of a typical car trunk, or will fit with just one seat folded down. Carrying it from a parking area to the beach is also fairly easy with the shoulder strap, provided that one hand is available to stabilize it in the wind. A nice quirk is that the final fold of the kayak forms a nice "base" so that when setting the bundle down on pavement, it will remain standing and not just fall over. This could be useful for longer jaunts to the water's edge.

Lastly, unfolding the kayak at home makes it trivial to hose down, as part of post-paddling clean up. It also seems to dry faster this way.

Overall, as a novice kayaker, I think this is a reasonable product, although their website certainly doesn't sell it as well as a comparable Oru folding kayak. Later, I will pursue taking this kayak with me by bus and by bicycle (with a custom mount to stand it up). I think it fits the bill for someone wishing to paddle recreationally but without committing to storing/moving a hardshell kayak, or wishes to start with minimal investment.

Hi, I don’t know much when it comes to kayak maintenance, so I don’t know how bad this is, or how urgent its repair is. What sort of repair would this require? Is it something I can do myself? Or should I get a professional to do it.

Thanks

I have no prior kayaking experience except occasionally paddling one while camping with friends on still water. That's fun and all, but I'd like to get out on the water on my own, to some of the nearby lakes near me, maybe once a month during the sunny seasons. None of these would have anything remotely considered as "rapids".

My main consideration is transporting a prospective kayak, as I greatly prefer biking rather than driving a car for distances within an hour of me, which includes two or three suitable bodies of water. While I have the capacity to store a conventional hard-shell kayak at home, I'm exploring a folding kayak, since this could go with me in a car for farther locations, on a bike for nearby waters, and even a bus. I feel the hassle of moving a 12 ft hard-shell kayak would discourage me from ever using it outright.

This specific model won't ship until October, which might be a bit late in the season, but it's on sale for $300 out the door, or $273 because of a 10% email coupon for keeping it in my cart for an hour.

I'm aware that this isn't anywhere comparable to conventional kayaks, certainly not in price, rough water handling, and maybe not even longevity. But at this particular juncture, and for that particular price point, I think I have a use-case that aligns well with a folding kayak, and if I do develop the itch for something even better, I can always upgrade later. I can accept that this might be a "kayak-shaped toy", but if it floats on water and moves, I would be happy to start with that.

To that end, my questions for this community are whether there are other comparable folding kayaks I should look at, or reasons I should or shouldn't proceed with this purchase in the coming days.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated!

Update: I've ordered it and hope to see how it turns out when it arrives in October

Update: It arrived in late October, and I've posted my initial thoughts here: https://sh.itjust.works/post/30172125