Re: [Paddlewise] Change of Topic(s) Was Re: Hav

Ralph Diaz wrote:

<snip> I constantly hear the rap that you shouldn't buy a folding kayak because you have to assemble it all the time.  People who say that don't realize that you can leave them assembled for long stretches of time if you have a place to store one that way <snip>

In that sense, folding boats give you a lot of flexibility.  If you want, you can leave it assembled most of the time and break it down for traveling.  I've been leaving my Feathercraft K-1 assembled about 95 percent of the time.  Although one the reasons I got it in the first place was because we are "space challenged," I rigged up a pully system to suspend it from the ceiling in the garage.  The structure of the boat, with cross-ribs on either side of cockpit, worked well for this, as a two-by-four with 2-inch deep notches in it locks into the ribs, and I attach the rope which suspends the kayak to the center of the two-by-four.  Frankly, I set up this system when I found that assembling this particular boat, with its fine tolerances, each time I went out on a day paddle for a few hours (which is about all my schedule allows most of the time) was a royal pain -- 45 minutes to an hour to assemble, and then about 30 minutes to disassemble.  This was a price I was willing to pa!
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y, however, for a folding boat that performs as well as (or better than) many hardshells.  Being able to take my boat along on our vacation to Hawaii this year also was a big plus.

<snip>  "What! You can cartop them?"  Yes, you can. <snip>

Yup, mine gets cartopped most weekends.  One of the unique things about cartopping a foldable is to see it flex with the vertical movement of the car over bumps and depressions in the road . . . it's like it has its own shock absorbers.  It does the same thing, though less pronounced, on the water.  The feeling is a little odd at first, but I've come to really enjoy it.  The boat feels like a living thing on the water.

<snip>  Sponsons probably would have made what turned out to be a life-threatening ordeal into just a mildly unpleasant experience.>

One of the benefits of the internal sponsons on folding boats is that you can re-enter without using the paddlefloat rescue or having someone else hold the boat steady.  I just pull myself up into the cockpit face down, flip over onto my rear, and then insert each of my legs into the boat.  The downside, I have found, is that I've had a difficult time learning to roll the boat with the sponsons inflated.  The wide beam of the boat and the large cockpit, which leaves a lot of room between my hips and the hull, don't help.  I know Ralph says that you don't need to roll a folding boat because of their inherent stability, but I have capsized my K-1 unintentionally before, and I would like to do be able to roll it should the situation arise again.  Any suggestions on rolling a K-1 (I've heard it can be done) would be much appreciated.


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