On Mon, 19 Oct 1998 12:07:59 K. Whilden wrote: >I would also be interested in any comments regarding the handling of the >Perception Shadow, which appears to be a smaller SeaLion, more or less. >And I would love to hear about any other plastic boats that meet the above >requirements. My wife paddles a Shadow and so far has not been pleased with its tendancy to weathercock (let me also add that this is our first year of kayaking so our skill levels aren't exactly high yet). Unfortunately due to her size (5'6" and very slim (I ain't dumb enough to publish her weight)) she was really limited in her selection of which plastic kayak to get. (strong incentive to upgrade to glass or build a Coho or Osprey Std (which would be better for someone her size?)) IIRC she found the CD Squall (that's the smaller one right, not the Storm) to not weathercock as much. The downside to it was that it took a lot of effort for her to get it moving and was hard to turn. Now I'm going to tread onto a touchy subject. I personally think that part of her problem with the Shadow weathercocking on her is self induced. She likes to paddle at a very slow pace (I outpace her even with breaks to let her catch up). When I paddle at her pace my Looksha IV starts to weathercock too (very little forward motion to offset the weathercocking). I will grant her that she is small and no where near as strong as me (no, I'm not buff). Another problem that she has that is only partially her fault is that she won't lean to counter the weathercocking. This is probably more due to the fact that we need to seriously pad out her cockpit. She has no contact between her hips and the boat/seat (I said she was small). She claims that she doesn't have enough control to effectively lean. Padding out our cockpits is high on the agenda (I just backordered the Sea Kayaker with the article on how to do that). The conclusion here is that the Shadow does weathercock, especially for the smaller person it was supposedly designed for. Mel --- There are three types of people, those who can count and those who can't. -----== Sent via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Easy access to 50,000+ discussion forums *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Oct 19 1998 - 13:43:03 PDT
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