[Paddlewise] New boat -Lettman

   I had an opportunity to try a new boat over the last weekend that had some
rather innovative features that I thought might be fun to throw out on the
list. The boat is manufactured in Germany by a company called Lettman. It
seems to be really well made and was a lot of fun to paddle empty - very
sporty.

   The first thing which caught my eye was the way they dealt with the rudder.
The rudder itself tucked up underneath the stern in a slot in the hull when
not deployed. To use the rudder one "shifted" a small lever on the deck
directly in front of the cockpit. You move it to the left to drop the rudder;
you move it to the right to bring it back up into the hull. This reminded me
of shifting gears on a bicycle. Very slick. You could lower the rudder just a
bit, or all the way, depending on your preference. This system is reminiscent
of boats with skegs in that there is nothing up on deck, it's all underneath.

   The rudder was controlled by means of "foot peddles." The peddles are
adjusted by way of a sliding track on the floor of the kayak. They consist of
a solid bottom which you brace your heels against, and then control the rudder
with peddles similar to those in a car. There is a cord on each peddle which
is easily adjusted from the seat of the cockpit to allow for variations of
angle to the peddles. I found this system secure and comfortable. However,
after a couple of hours I really would have liked to take my feet off of the
peddles and stretch a bit which was not possible as far as I could tell.
Still, not a bad system.

   The boat also had a bunjie net for the front deck which covered a recess on
the deck designed to hold a pump. I really liked that net. I put my water
bottle on the deck as a test and proceeded to launch through some sizable surf
and actually found my water bottle was still on the deck when I got out! Now
that was cool.

   Those Germans seemed to have put a lot of thought into this boat. Of course
I would have to do a trip or two in order to really test this boat, but I did
like these features which I have not seen before on this coast. Has anybody
else had any experience with these boats?

Scott
So.Cal.
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