Roger wrote: >>I suppose the short answer about taking "sea touring kayaks" down rivers has to do with boat size relative to river size. A big boat (Eddyline Raven, 17 feet by 24") seemed to work fantastic on a big river (the Colorado flowing between 8 and 10,000 cfs). The long answer, which I won't go into here, has to do with the skills of the paddler. I suppose a highly skilled paddler could navigate a Yukon safely down a Class III flowing at only 800 cfs, but I wouldn't recommend it for most boaters and probably wouldn't want to try it myself. Other successes: I do have two friends who took Mariner Coasters (14 feet by 24", fiberglass sea touring "playboats"-- are you there Matt?) down a Class I-II stretch of the San Juan River in Utah that has a couple of fairly straightforward Class III drops. I'm not sure what the flow was, but they did say that it was "scrapey" in places on their week-long trip. The advantage over a WW boat is that they could carry camping gear more easily. The advantage over a raft should be obvious to anyone who has tried to paddle a rubber barge on flat water stretches. The long and short of it, I suppose, is that using touring kayaks in ww can be either stupendous or stupid, depending on the size of the kayak, the flow and character of the river, and the paddling skills of the paddler.<< Yeah I'm here Roger. Couldn't agree with the gist of your post more but have a few corrections to the details. Raven is 16' 8" by 22.5" not 17'x24" and the Coaster is 13' 5.25" by 23" not 14' x 24". Both are very maneuverable sea kayaks. I have been down tight class 2+ rivers in a Coaster and while it is possible it is not as much fun as in a WW kayak. You have to plan much further ahead and get most of the turn out of the way in advance before catching an eddy. For really big whitewater like the Colorado River though a reasonably maneuverable sea kayak has an advantage over a WW kayak both in punching through bigger stoppers (they are faster so carry more momentum through the wave) and in moving faster and straighter on the often long flat stretches between rapids. I once took a Mariner II (17-11 x 21.5) about 10 miles up and down the small narrow and logjam clogged Ozette River. I would have preferred to be in a Coaster rather than the Mariner II (or even a WW boat) but it was a spur of the moment kind of thing not something I planned to do (and it looked a lot shorter on the map than it was and the map doesn't tell you about the 20+ log jams either--I barely got back to the coast before dark). Warning: I don't recommend this river as logjams are dangerous (I tried to go down it at another time with a friend and we turned around after a mile because of the hazards of the logjams in the current). If you must maneuver quickly while dodging rocks you definitely want the WW kayak and nothing else will come close. If open canoes use the river a sea kayak should have no serious problems (except I would rather not scrape them down the shallow riffles at low water). Matt Broze http://www.marinerkayaks.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Aug 15 2000 - 20:55:03 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:30 PDT