My job offers a fitness benefit to buy up to $1000 of fitness equipment each year and so far, I’ve only spent $50 on sneakers. Mrs. Charming and Rested and I rent a kayak 3-4 times per year and paddle on still water lakes and rivers. Occasionally, we take a guided tour and occasionally we just go somewhere where $40 gets you a couple of hours in a kayak. We paddle around and then go home. We want a tandem kayak of our own so we can kayak without reservations on busier weekends and allow more leisurely trips at our own pace without worrying about a return time.
We would likely kayak maybe 4-5 times per year in the manner above. We have gone salt water kayaking but only in very calm bays. I can’t imagine we would do anything more with the new one but it would be nice to have at least that flexibility. The capacity and place to carry a calm 60 pound dog is a must. Cranky Dog is a good kayaking buddy.
I am leaning towards a rigid Kayak for durability. My bike is 20 years old; having the latest and greatest fitness technology is not important to me but having something that lasts is.
The budget is perhaps $1500 but ideally, we’d spend under $1000 for the kayak, paddles, and a life vest. (From an after tax perspective, the first $950 in equipment costs us only about $300 in income taxes but every dollar over that costs us $1. So spending those extra dollars have to be worth it.) I would prefer a new Kayak so my employer doesn’t question some dodgy handwritten receipt from a dude on Facebook marketplace.
I think most of the kayaks we have rented are sit in kayaks and we like them. Are they more stable than the sit on kayaks?
General advice and specific recommendations are equally welcome. Thanks!
We have Perception kayaks. Including a tandem which was our first kayak purchase. The sales guy said why do you want a divorce boat? Har har. We coordinated paddling without any issue. The rear paddler matches the front cadence. We could move that thing quickly through the water. It’s wide and stable easy to get in and out and one can paddle solo in it by pushing the front seat towards the rear.
We strapped it to the roof of our big van drove to Fl and paddled around the marshes and bays of Amelia Island Fl. Saw lots of gators none attacked despite the encouragement of local fisherman trying to sass us.
We’re in Michigan so it’s nice to get out on the water in cooler weather without getting wet. I’m assuming you get wet with a sit on top.
Thanks! We have used tandem kayaks almost exclusively and we much prefer them. That’s not going to be a sticking point for us. If one person gets a little tired, the other can pick up the slack but we’re in it together and we will enjoy our trip together. We mutually decide where to go and when we get there it’s at the same time and with the person we want to be with.
The guidance from you and elsewhere seems to be that you get more wet with a sit on top but somehow, that makes less sense to me. If you’re higher over the water, how do you get wetter? And if so, why does anyone prefer the sit on tops? Are they more stable (which also wouldn’t make sense to me given the presumably higher center of gravity)? Is it just the better view? If I’m on the water, the view from the surface seems fine. Is the seating position more comfortable? I don’t think we’ve used any sit-on-tops or if we did, any advantage wasn’t noticeable or memorable to me.
Also, I would seriously consider used – because some (many?) kayak rental places sell their rentals at the end of the season, possibly at a good discount.
Some folks like sit-on-tops because they are scared they will be trapped if they tip over. Wet exits are pretty easy IMHO, and tandem kayaks are quite stable.
But sit ins you are protected from spray – I personally prefer them.
I haven’t found spectacular deals on used kayaks (though I have found some decent ones) but as I noted above, I would prefer a new kayak mostly because i don’t want to submit a dodgy handwritten receipt to my employer. Even if they approved it, and they probably would because I’m generally credible, I wouldn’t even want to raise the suggestion that I am defrauding the program.
I would question wheter or not that they would approve a tandem kayak since it is meant for two people and one of them is not an employee. That would be like asking them to pay for two gym memberships.
A fair point and yet I’m not worried about that. The idea is to get me exercising more and if I will exercise more with a tandem kayak than without it (which is absolutely true) than I think it’s a fair use of the benefit. I did specify I will buy only a single life jacked with the benefit. Mrs. Charming and Rested will get one too but that will come out of personal funds. They would be happy to buy me a treadmill for my house that my wife could use too even if they wouldn’t pay for her gym membership.
I sit “in” it, ie, I have was is called a “deck” or “skirt” that seals off the interior with an elastic material garment around my waist streched over the opening I sit in. This helps when capsizing, as the boat does not immediately fill with water.
What you are describing does not sound like a kayak to me! Even on double kayaks, there is no space for a dog.
I think you are referencing what I would call a “surf ski” - a large “surf board” but with inset seats and probably some storage space fore and aft. Unlike a kayak, you (and your dog, and your fellow paddler) are not physically connected to the boat. If you roll, you fall off, compared to a “sit-in” boat where you can recover and roll back upright - the “Eskimo roll”
Yeah, a dog >6 pounds would be difficult to deal with in a traditional sit-in kayak, which is what all my freshwater kayaks are. You could take a dog out in a sit-on-top ocean kayak. We rent those to paddle in the Caribbean, and they are fun.
As far as tandem “divorce boats” are concerned….
We rented one once in St Martin. We paddled from Friar’s Bay to Grande Case Bay, a ~2 hour paddle. Saw a sea turtle and all sorts of fish and birds. Sorry, but I prefer having complete control of my boat.
Much of our paddling is on moving water rivers and streams) and a tandem just wouldn’t work. Friends are surprised by how well we do on light whitewater in our traditional boats.
Well, it’s possible that, from the employer’s point of view, the perk is intended to equip you for regular physical fitness activities that will keep you healthy on a steady, on-going basis, not to equip you for a recreational activity that you will engage in “4-5 times a year”. If they balk at your request, that might be the reason why.
Coincidentally, my gf’s first kayak purchase shortly after we met was an $800 boat paid for by the advertising agency she worked for as part of their fitness campaign. The previous year she’d purchased a “lift ticket” for skiing.
The agency never turned down a reasonable request that was <$2k.
She still owns the kayak and uses it regularly 18 years later.
Can I ask why? I have zero experience with kayaks, but extensive experience with canoes, where navigating them “tandem” is pretty much par for the course (mixing my sports metaphors a bit). I keep telling myself that I’ll get onto a kayak with my wife or one of my kids, and I’d always imagine that it would be a tandem boat. “Practice” would be still lakewater, but real trips would usually be smaller rivers, with minimal still dam ponds.
Any kind of rapids are best navigated in a boat that is quickly responsive. That’s why whitewater kayaks are so short. I’ve done Class I to III whitewater in a kayak designed for flat water. It’s extra work compared to a whitewater kayak, but it’s fun. I regularly paddle a river with some Class IV rapids and it is challenging.
A tandem boat lacks the quick responsiveness necessary for whitewater, plus the two paddlers might have different ideas about how best to tackle a given situation.
Another problem with tandems is that you cannot go off on solo paddles. Sure, you can do flat water solo, but the boat is heavier to car-top. (Yes, people are gonna say you shouldn’t solo for safety reasons, but I really enjoy going off on my own).
That would net you a very good double sit-on here. Something like this was < $500 a couple years ago. I’m sure you could get similar in the US (an imported Mazowe would, however, run you $1100)
I prefer sit-ons, and don’t find myself getting particularly wetter in them. I don’t own one, but rent the single-paddler ones made by that company when I do kayak.
I imagine for white water you need to agree - “if we roll to the left, we work to roll back on the left”. A tandem roll recovery could most likely be done by just one of the team (the back, I imagine) but would be thwarted if front and back are trying different rotations.
There is a famous kayak race here in South Africa where people take boats which to me are totally unsuited to white water, the Dusi. The boats look more suited to sea. My boat is less than a third of the length, more than double the width, and has a turning circle measured in centimeters.
But then, the people doing it know a hell of a lot more than me.
I don’t think you mean a surfski in this case. Modern surfskis are very, very narrow and very long boats built primarily for racing, or at least performance paddling. And they’re eyewateringly expensive. I also don’t believe there are any tandem surfskis.
The only kind of boat I’d call a kayak that can manage a dog as a passenger is a sit-on-top. A whitewater boat or a touring sea kayak don’t have flat deck space that would be safe.
There is also a class of boat sometimes called a recreational boat that is often not exactly a kayak, instead having a little canoe DNA. Those are sit-inside boats, but with a broad, open cockpit unlike a sea kayak or whitewater kayak where you sit in confined, closed space. These sometimes could fit a dog. I think of these as the worst of both worlds, mostly because unlike both a sit-on-top and a traditional kayak, they can take on water and become vary difficult to manage.
Sit-on-tops tend to be very splashy, and unlike a closed boat, you don’t have any protection in the form of a deck and spray skirt to keep the water off of you. Big enough waves or wake tend come up over a sit-on-top, but it’s not a concern as there are scupper holes in the floor for all of that to drain.
People prefer the sit-on-tops because they are much easier to paddle and tend to be more comfortable both in that you just about can’t flip one and you for sure can’t sink one, and also because they have a much bigger seat with lots of room to shift around. On a hot day, the wetter ride is a bonus too. They also seem to be indestructible, which is why they are the only kinds of kayak I see at rental places any more. They’re tourist-proof.
The fishermen love the sit-on-tops as well as they are stable platforms for casting and landing fish with lots of room for a cooler or livewell or whatever all it is those guys have.
The sit-inside boats will be more performance-oriented, whether that’s the extreme devotion to agility in a whitewater boat, or the speed and maneuverablity that a sea kayak offers. A tandem sea kayak will likely be a little faster still, at the expense of maneuverability as they tend to be even longer and wider.
My boat is a traditional British-style sea kayak. It’s a sit-inside with a closed deck and sprayskirt. I can keep quite dry in cold weather, but I give some of that advantage back by using a Greenland paddle. Many of the common strokes involve getting your hands in or at least very close to the water, not something you’d typically do with a Euro-blade paddle.
