<snip some stuff> |My wife and I are looking to add kayak touring to our long list of athletic |endeavors. For now we are looking for boats that come in just under $1,200 |each. We'll use them for a couple of years and then move into more advanced |kayaks. |My wife likes the Perception Carolina Exp. and I am trying to decide |between several but I seem to keep coming back to the Necky Looksha Sport |Exp. <snip some more> |Ron and Nancy I'm going to make an assumption that that Necky Looksha Sport Exp is the plastic version of the Loosksha Sport IVs. I have a Looksha IV and my wife has the IVs. Both are kevlar layups. When we started looking into sea kayaks we started with plastic but after much hmmming and hawing we slowing escalated to kevlar. One reason was the limited lifetime on the plastic boats. I have taken out rental plastic boats that suffered greatly from oil caning. They all suffered from one degree or another. I just could not stand the thought of that happening to my boat. It seemed to me that I was going to spend $2400 on two boats and within a very short number of years I would be looking for a new boat. That was to expensive for me. Hopefully others will comment on my impressions of plastic boats. Another was weight. I'm 6 feet tall and 185 pounds. I keep in shape. I have moved, by hand, 25 tons of dirt and rock into my yard for landscaping. Weak mind, strong back, don't ya know! I dont want a heavy boat. 8-) PITA. I can get my kayak up on my truck, solo, without a problem. Add another 20% or so and it gets more uncomfortable. Especially when the wind picks up. Remember that the kayaks are long and ungainly. Every bit of weight hurts when loading and unloading. If you will always be paddling with your wife it may not be an issue. If you or her will be soloing you may want to take that into consideration. The height of the vehicle(s) that will transport the yaks also should be considered. There is a great difference in loading the yaks on our beat up "short" Volvo station wagon as compared with my full size, "tall" 4x4 pick' em up truck. Of course money is a concern as well but only you can make that decsion. We love our Looksha's. I paddled quite a few other kayaks before settling on the Looksha. After a couple of months with the Looksha IV, I paddled other boats I had initially considered. I made the right choice. Even with the extra money for the kevlar. But you really should try to find a symposium or a demo day somewhere to try out the boats. The paddling stores in my area, central NC, start having demo days in the early summer. I ended up with a boat I had not initially considered. We ended up traveling 5 hours and staying overnight for a symposium to try out different boats. Best investment we made. Hope this rambling helps.... Dan McCarty *************************************************************************** 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 Tue May 04 1999 - 06:58:43 PDT
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