Vince Dalrymple <vincedalrymple_at_home.com> wrote: <SNIP> >>>>>>Getting back to Mariner's Marlin Blue, it seems as good as any standard deck color available for all paddling except clear turquoise waters. If only Matt would push equally visible hull colors so his boats could be easier spotted at a glance when rolling around upturned and unmanned in surf...<<<<<SNIP> Think of it this way. If you rollover and die in your white hulled kayak your life won't be all for not. Your legacy will be having done your small part to decrease global warming as the white hull you left facing the sun reflects the most energy back into space than water or any other color you could choose for your hull). :-) Actually, it has been my experience that our hulls have the frustrating tendency to stay upright in the surf once they are swamped. I would like them to quickly roll back to shore on the front of a breaking soup but like some disobedient puppy they obstinately stay upright and keep slipping over the breakers. I know, maybe a rudder would help. It might provide the wave with the leverage it needs to get that rolling action started. I don't particularly "push" any color on a customer. I do try to present the pros and cons of each choice and let the customer decide based on what factors are more important to them. Visibility (and some want to disappear on the beach rather than be seen on the water), weight (yep, some colors weigh more), fading and scratch resistance and the scratch's visibility=resale value, high light reflectivity hurts the eyes and high light absorption cooks the kayak's contents, and some folks even consider the psychological factors involved in looking out over the large area of foredeck color that's constantly in their field of vision. Several customers have chosen marlin blue decks with yellow hulls and although I personally find the combination not very appealing, I figure "to each his own". However, we have on a few occasions increased the size of the deposit we ask for when an order is placed because some of the color combinations customers have chosen would be very hard to sell to anyone else if they back out after the parts are made (or decided they didn't like the unusual colors they picked later). I think the black deck/red hull kayak was the strangest combination we've done (black deck--talk about increasing global warming--but the local warming in that kayak would be what would bother me most). We have had many orders cancelled for many reasons over the years but only once that I can recall have we not returned a customers deposit when that happened. We kept the $100 deposit of one customer in the late 1980's who insisted he wanted an older model we had discontinued and would now find much harder to sell. We went to a whole lot of extra trouble to restore the mold and build him the kayak he insisted he had to have, then once it was ready he told us he couldn't buy it because his wife decided to use the money to remodel the bathroom. Looking back on it, I suppose we should have been more merciful. That man had probably already been punished enough but I guess I was just not feeling real sympathetic at the time. Matt Broze http://www.marinerkayaks.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Dec 13 2000 - 09:46:28 PST
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