I need to chime-in in disagreement with the generalizations. Each boat needs to be evaluated on its own. There is no performance criteria that can be accurately predicted by looking at the flag decal on a kayak. There are stable and slow British kayaks. There are tippy and fast North American boats. There are British boats perceived as rugged which are very poorly built. There are rugged N American boats. The British do not own a monopoly on any particular performance criteria. What the British boats have is very effective marketing. Good marketing does not require the best product. Windows is fat, slow, and unstable when compared to the Mac OS, but it had better marketing. If you call something "high performance" often and loud enough, people will start to believe you. Even if some British kayaks deserve the designation, that does not keep some N American boats from being equally deserving. It is also important to remember that a design which is suitable for the conditions in one place may not be the best design for different conditions. Boats suitable for working close to shore in short, steep chop will probably be poorly adapted for open water in large, long swells. Nick At 11:35 AM +0200 5/14/00, Joshua Teitelbaum wrote: >Dear Friends: > >As my kayaking abilities have improved (I only started in November), I have >begun to think about buying a boat. I am learning about design and reading >a lot, particularly on Paddlewise. My ONLY experience has been in the NDK >Romany Explorer 18 (I hope to paddle many other boats this summer when I >will be on the US West Coast). People who paddle these and other British >boats are extremely chauvinistic about them; they are characterized as >high-end, high-performance, the most durable, the most seaworthy, and the >only boats worthy of the accomplished paddler. They do not use rudders; a >skeg maybe. My club, in planning a trip to Alaska, will only use British >boats. Many things have been nagging at me regarding these boats. Nick Schade Guillemot Kayaks 824 Thompson St, Suite I Glastonbury, CT 06033 (860) 659-8847 Schade_at_guillemot-kayaks.com http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/ >>>>"It's not just Art, It's a Craft!"<<<< *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon May 15 2000 - 06:22:29 PDT
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